Date of Graduation

5-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Psychological Science

Advisor/Mentor

Beike, Denise

Committee Member/Reader

McDaniel, Brenda

Committee Member/Second Reader

Kral, Timothy

Committee Member/Third Reader

Bouchillon, Brandon

Abstract

The present study experimentally investigates the number of parents who truly regret having their children. By using an unmatched count technique developed by Gervais and Njale (2020), participants (N = 751) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: an experimental “yes/no” agreement condition, the “target statement present” counting condition, and the “target statement not present” counting condition. Participants were also asked different questions regarding marital status, whether they had a disorder diagnosis, had a history of their parents being divorced, and other suspected moderator variables. Regret of having children was reported significantly less compared to previous studies (Piotrowski et al., 2021). However, the moderator variables, some of which are listed above, were found to be statistically significant when participants did explicitly indicate regret about having their child(ren). Further studies will need to be done with possible changes to the phrasing of the regret statement, exploring the moderator variables more in-depth, or utilizing a sliding scale for an indication of regret instead of a binary yes or no.

Keywords

Parenting, children, regret, emotion, regret of having children

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