The present study examined what older people regret, and the relationships between regret, health and life satisfaction. The study also explored the role of secondary interpretive control beliefs in relation to regret. Participants (N= 228; 79-98 years old) were asked to report on the content and frequency of their regret, secondary interpretive control beliefs (e.g., beliefs in finding the "silver lining" in a dark cloud), health, and life satisfaction. A content analysis revealed that participants most commonly reported feeling regret due to things they had not done, the death of a loved one, and their own or others' health problems. Regression analyses indicated that experiencing regret more frequently was associated with poorer health and life satisfaction. Moreover, evidence for an emotion-modifying role of secondary interpretive control beliefs was shown through its negative association with regret. Results suggest that older adults may be experiencing age-related regrets that differ in content from those experienced at younger ages and that certain control beliefs may serve to lessen regret.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 34. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 September 2026.
All research outputs
#1,480,725
of 34,293,146 outputs
Outputs from The International Journal of Aging and Human Development
#48
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Outputs of similar age
#4,305
of 178,839 outputs
Outputs of similar age from The International Journal of Aging and Human Development
#1
of 2 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,293,146 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 521 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.3. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 178,839 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 2 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than all of them
