Cost of action vs cost of inaction
In short
When you consider doing something, you usually weigh the risks of acting against a “safe” option: doing nothing. But inaction is not neutral. It has costs too; they are just harder to see. The model suggests putting both on the table: what it costs you to act, and what it costs you not to act. Research explains why this step is needed. We tend to judge harm caused by an action more harshly than the same harm caused by inaction. Yet when we look back on our lives, we more often regret what we didn’t do.
What it says
Harm from action weighs more. Ritov and Baron (1990) gave students a hypothetical scenario. A disease kills 10 in 10,000 children. A vaccine prevents it completely, but can itself kill some number of children through side effects. Participants had to say what the maximum acceptable risk from the vaccine should be for the government to make it compulsory.
Any risk below 10 in 10,000 would have meant fewer deaths than without the vaccine. Yet only 9% of participants accepted a risk of 9 in 10,000 or more. 23% said no risk should be tolerated, and 57% chose a threshold between 1 and 8 in 10,000. Many explained that vaccinating would mean causing the deaths of some children, which they considered wrong even if it saved more.
The authors call the phenomenon omission bias: preferring harm caused by omission to equal or lesser harm caused by an action. They describe it as an overgeneralization of the distinction between doing and not doing, applied to a case in which the distinction is irrelevant.
In the short term we regret actions, in the long term inactions. Gilovich and Medvec (1995) start from a classic scenario by Kahneman and Tversky. Two investors each lose $1,200: one because he switched stocks, the other because he didn’t. 92% of respondents said the one who acted feels more regret.
Gilovich and Medvec show, however, that the picture changes over time:
- A lifetime’s regrets. They asked 77 people (retired professors, nursing home residents, students and university staff) to name their biggest regrets. Of the 213 regrets, those about what they had not done outnumbered those about what they had done by nearly two to one: 63% vs 37%.
- Two students, two choices. In one scenario, one student transfers to another university and another stays. Both come to regret their decision. 76% of participants said the one who transferred regrets it more right away. Asked about the long run, 63% said the one who stayed regrets it more.
The authors propose several explanations. Over time, the pain of a mistaken action fades, for example because you repair it or find a silver lining. By contrast, we become increasingly convinced that we “could have” done the thing we didn’t do.
Example
An example built for this text: for a year you’ve been meaning to ask for a raise, but you keep putting it off. The cost of acting is visible right away: an awkward conversation and the risk of a refusal. The cost of not acting shows up nowhere at the moment. It is the pay gap, month after month, plus the fact that no one finds out you wanted it. If you only write down the first column, doing nothing always looks like the safe option.
How to apply it
The steps below are a practical approach we propose. The studies cited did not test them.
- Write inaction down as a separate option. Instead of “do I do X or not?”, write two columns: “if I do X” and “if I do nothing”. For each, note what happens in a month and in a few years.
- Compare like with like. Omission bias means that harm caused by an action seems worse than the same harm caused by inaction (Ritov and Baron, 1990). Ask yourself: if the outcome were the same, would I judge it the same whether it came from what I did or from what I didn’t do?
- Think about the regret of years from now too. In the short term, a mistaken action hurts more. In the long term, the people in Gilovich and Medvec’s study mentioned what they hadn’t done more often. Ask what you will regret in ten years, not just tomorrow.
- Don’t turn this into “always act”. Sometimes doing nothing really is the better choice. The aim is to compare fairly, not to favour action.
Limits and nuances
- The scenarios are hypothetical. Ritov and Baron’s study used an imaginary scenario, with 53 students in the first experiment. What people say in a questionnaire may differ from what they do when the decision is real.
- The regret pattern replicated, but more weakly. Yeung and Feldman (2022) repeated four of the 1994 studies with 988 online participants from the US. They confirmed the results in three of them, but with weaker effects. In the fourth, they did not find the pattern. The authors discuss several possible explanations, including changes in how people understand “action” and “inaction”.
- The lifetime-regrets sample is small. It was 77 people, from around a single American university. The difference between older and younger people (74% vs 61% regrets of inaction) was not statistically significant, as the authors themselves note.
- The difference between doing and not doing is not always irrelevant. Ritov and Baron speak of an overgeneralization. In many moral and legal situations, the distinction rightly matters. The problem arises when you apply it where outcomes are what count.
Sources
- Ilana Ritov, Jonathan Baron (1990). Reluctance to vaccinate: Omission bias and ambiguity
- Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Husted Medvec (1995). The experience of regret: What, when, and why
- Siu Kit Yeung, Gilad Feldman (2022). Revisiting the Temporal Pattern of Regret in Action Versus Inaction: Replication of Gilovich and Medvec (1994) With Extensions Examining Responsibility
See also: First-order negative, second-order positive, Opportunity cost, Sunk cost