How Different Personality Types Experience Regret: A Study

Why Regret Looks So Different from Person to Person

How heavily regret lands – and how long it stays – tracks closely with your personality type. Almost everyone knows the feeling of a decision replayed at midnight, a sentence you wish you could take back, an invitation you should have declined. Regret is one of the most familiar emotions there is, and it does real work – it warns, it teaches, and sometimes it simply weighs. Some people describe regret as a near-constant companion that follows them into bed. Others treat it as a passing note that fades by lunchtime. Personality sits close to the center of that difference.

To map those differences, we created the "Regret: General Attitudes" survey, which asked 14 questions about how often people feel regret, what their regrets are usually about, whether regret disrupts their mood or their sleep, whether they manage to turn it into motivation or a lesson, and how quickly it tends to arrive after a decision. Over 30,000 people responded, and the results – broken down by all 16 personality types – reveal something interesting. On some questions the types are split by enormous margins, while on others they answer almost identically. This report walks through each question, group by group, and looks at what the numbers say about how personality shapes our relationship with the past.

The Biggest Personality Divides in How We Handle Regret

The single strongest pattern in this survey has nothing to do with what people regret and everything to do with how much room regret gets to occupy in their mind. On every question about frequency and emotional impact – feeling regret often, dwelling on it, losing sleep over it, feeling an urge to punish oneself – Introverted personality types, who recharge through time alone, clustered at the top, and Extraverted types, who recharge through engagement with others, gathered at the bottom, with remarkably few exceptions. The Turbulent trait, which brings a keener sensitivity to stress and self-doubt, probably sharpens the effect, although that reading is interpretation rather than measurement – this survey groups answers by personality type, not by Identity variant, so the Turbulent and Assertive halves of each type can’t be separated here. Still, Introversion and Turbulence together form the Constant ImprovementStrategy, and our wider research shows that these personalities pay close attention to what could have gone better. Extraversion and Assertiveness form People Mastery, whose steadier confidence fits the low end of these charts just as neatly. Time spent alone with one’s own thoughts appears to give regret more room to circulate.

The content of regret follows a different fault line. When we asked whether regrets tend to be about an effect on another person or on oneself, the 16 types sorted almost perfectly by the Thinking and Feeling traits – the divide between people who weigh decisions by logic and consistency and those who weigh them by empathy and impact. Every personality type with the Thinking trait chose themselves by a clear margin, while types with the Feeling trait split close to evenly – and a few of them even leaned slightly toward themselves. A related question showed the same divide in softer form – Feeling types were the most likely to say their regrets concern their own behavior rather than the outcome it produced. Put simply, one group tends to ask whether a decision worked, and the other tends to ask whether it was kind.

A third pattern governs what happens next. Whether regret becomes fuel, a lesson, or neither depends largely on the Judging and Prospecting traits – roughly, whether someone prefers settled plans or open options. Personality types with the Judging trait were consistently more likely to say they learn from regretted actions and use regret to motivate themselves. Types with the Prospecting trait were far more likely to admit that they often make decisions they already know they will regret – in fact, every Prospecting type outranked every Judging type on that question. Foresight isn’t really the difference here. It’s what each group does with the warning once it appears.

Perhaps the most useful takeaway is how weakly these patterns connect to each other. Feeling regret often and finding regret useful are close to unrelated. INFP personalities (Mediators) topped the chart for frequency of regret yet sat near the bottom for using regret as motivation, while ENTJ personalities (Commanders) inverted that pattern almost exactly. Meanwhile, three questions produced broad agreement across all 16 types – most people say they try to live without regrets, most say they try not to think about the regrets they have, and most personality types lean toward regret setting in quickly rather than slowly. The intention to escape regret looks close to universal. The success rate clearly is not.

Which Personality Types Feel Regret Most Often?

Regret is nearly universal as an experience, but it isn’t spread evenly. The frequency of regret varied enormously by personality type – from fewer than three in ten respondents of some types to nearly nine in ten of others. Yet when we asked about intentions rather than experiences, the differences shrank dramatically. Almost everyone says they want to live without regrets, and roughly three-quarters of every personality type say they try to steer their thoughts away from the regrets they already carry. The wish for distance from regret, in other words, is something close to shared – it’s the weight of the feeling itself that personality redistributes.

Frequency of Regret

This question produced one of the widest splits in the entire survey. INFPs topped the list, with 88% saying they often feel regret, while just 26% of ENTJs said the same – a gap of more than 60 percentage points. The dividing line was remarkably clean – every Introverted personality type landed between 68% and 88%, while most Extraverted types sat below the halfway mark.

Introversion offers one likely explanation, since these personalities spend more of their day inside their own heads, where an old decision can circle back uninvited. Our framework points to a second factor as well – the Turbulent trait adds sensitivity to past missteps, which can make replaying old decisions feel almost routine. ENFP personalities (Campaigners) were the one Extraverted type to cross the midpoint, with 58% saying they often feel regret – perhaps because their emotional openness keeps past choices vivid. At the other end, the four types reporting the least regret – ENTJs, ESTP personalities (Entrepreneurs), ESTJ personalities (Executives), and ENTP personalities (Debaters) – were all Extraverted.

Aiming for a Life Without Regrets

Here the picture flips – and flattens. Every single personality type agreed at a high rate that they try to live their life with no regrets, from 88% of ESTJs down to 69% of INTP personalities (Logicians). A spread of roughly 20 points across all 16 types is narrow by the standards of our research, which tells us something useful – the "no regrets" ideal is close to a shared human goal rather than a personality-specific one.

What differences do exist run in a telling direction. The Extraverted types who rarely report feeling regret were the most likely to say they aim to avoid it altogether – every one of them landed at 82% or higher – while the Introverted types carrying the heaviest load of regret all sat below 78%. This may be less about effort than about honesty. When you regularly revisit your past, declaring that you live without regrets starts to feel like a claim you can’t back up. Types that seldom dwell on old decisions can adopt the motto more comfortably, because their experience already matches it.

Avoiding Regretful Thoughts

Avoidance turned out to be broadly popular. ISFP personalities (Adventurers) led the field, with 80% saying they try to avoid thinking about the things they do regret, and even the least avoidant type, ESTJs at 68%, still represented more than two-thirds agreement. No personality type dipped below that threshold, making this one of the most consistent results in the study. Whatever their relationship with regret, most people would rather not sit with it.

The interesting part is what this result does not track. Frequency of regret and the urge to avoid thinking about it barely line up. INFPs, the type most likely to feel regret often, are also strongly inclined to look away from it – a combination that suggests intent and outcome are two different things. At the low end sit ESTJs, INTJ personalities (Architects), and ENFJ personalities (Protagonists), all between 68% and 69%. These are goal-focused personalities with the Judging trait, and they may be somewhat more willing to face an uncomfortable memory if there’s a lesson worth extracting from it.

What We Actually Regret – Behavior, Outcomes, and Other People

Feeling regret is one thing. Knowing what it’s about is another. We asked respondents two forced-choice questions to get at the content of their regrets – whether they regret their own behavior or the outcome it produced, and whether the sting comes from hurting someone else or hurting themselves. The first question produced broad agreement, with nearly every personality type pointing at their own conduct rather than the result. The second produced one of the sharpest divides in the study, splitting the 16 types almost perfectly along the line between the Thinking and Feeling personality traits.

Behavior vs. Outcome

In 15 of the 16 types, more respondents said their regrets tend to be about their own behavior than about an undesirable outcome. ENFPs led the way, with 67% naming behavior, followed closely by INFPs at 66% – a reminder that for these personalities, the question isn’t really "did it work?" but "was that who I want to be?" ESTJs were the lone exception, and only barely – they split almost exactly down the middle, leaning toward the outcome by a fraction of a point.

The ranking follows the Thinking–Feeling divide, though gently rather than dramatically. Types with the Thinking trait clustered in the mid-50s on behavior, with ENTPs and INTJs both sitting close to a 55–45 split. Even so, most of them still put conduct ahead of consequences. Feeling types simply took that further, holding their behavior to a standard that a good outcome doesn’t automatically satisfy. A kind result achieved through unkind means still counts as a regret for them – which helps explain why the four Diplomat types – ENFPs, INFPs, INFJ personalities (Advocates), and ENFJs – occupy four of the top five spots on this question.

Harm to Others vs. Harm to Self

This is where the personality types genuinely part ways. Asked whether their regrets tend to be about an effect on another person or on themselves, 69% of ENTJs chose themselves – with ISTJ personalities (Logisticians) matching them at 69%. Every type with the Thinking trait landed on the self side by a comfortable margin. ENFPs sat at the opposite pole, with 57% naming their effect on another person.

It would be easy to read this as a story about who cares more, but the numbers suggest something more specific. Feeling types didn’t overwhelmingly choose other people – most of them hovered near an even split, with INFJs at 51% landing almost exactly in the middle. What separates the groups is that Thinking personalities rarely split at all. They tend to treat a decision as their own to own, measuring it against their own standards and their own goals rather than against the reactions of the people around them. Read alongside the previous question, a consistent picture emerges. Both groups tend to regret how they acted – what differs is the yardstick, internal for Thinking types and interpersonal for Feeling types.

The Emotional Toll of Dwelling on Regret

Once regret shows up, the real question is what it costs to keep it around. This group of questions looks at what happens after regret arrives – how much time people spend replaying it, and what it takes out of them. The results fall into tiers – dwelling and dampened mood are widespread, lost sleep is less common, and the urge toward self-punishment is the least common of all, though six personality types still reported it more often than not. The same names sit at the top of all four charts. Introverted personalities carry the heaviest emotional cost of regret, while most Extraverted types report it passing through them more quickly.

Dwelling on Regrets

Dwelling produced one of the cleanest divides in the study. INFPs led, with 83% saying they often dwell upon their regrets, while ENTJs came last at 26% – a spread of roughly 57 percentage points. Every Introverted personality type landed above 60%, with ISTP personalities (Virtuosos) marking the low end of that group. Among Extraverted types, only ENFPs crossed the halfway mark.

These results track closely with how often each type reports feeling regret in the first place, which suggests that frequency and rumination are two sides of the same habit. The Introverted and Turbulent personalities of the Constant Improvement Strategy concentrate at the top of this chart, and that fits what we know about them – their attention runs instinctively toward their own past performance. Set that against another finding from this survey, though – roughly seven in ten or more respondents in every personality type said they try to avoid thinking about their regrets. For a great many people, clearly, trying isn’t the same as succeeding.

Regret and Sleep

Sleep sits in the middle of this group – less widely affected than mood, but more affected than the urge toward self-punishment. Seven personality types said at a rate above 50% that thinking about their regrets often affects their sleep, and every one of those seven was Introverted. INFPs again led, with 69% reporting regret-disturbed sleep, while ESTPs came in lowest at 22% – roughly a third of the INFP figure.

Losing sleep seems to require a higher threshold than simply feeling bad. A regret has to keep returning, uninvited, during the quiet hours when nothing else competes for attention. That describes Introverted mental life more than anything else, which may explain why even the most affected Extraverted types stayed below the halfway line. ISTJs landed almost exactly at the boundary, at 51% – a reminder that a strong sense of duty can make an unresolved obligation surprisingly loud at 2 a.m.

Regret and Mood

Mood is where regret reaches almost everyone. A majority of the 16 personality types agreed that thinking about their regrets often affects their mood, and INFPs again topped the chart at 87% – the highest figure anywhere in this thematic group. Even the lowest-scoring type, ESTJs at 39%, sat well above their own scores on sleep and self-punishment. ISFJ personalities (Defenders) reached 76%, placing them among the types whose mood most often takes the hit.

Every single personality type reported a larger effect on mood than on sleep, and the size of that gap was fairly consistent from type to type. What really separates these personalities is the level they start from, not the width of the gap. ESFP personalities (Entertainers) said regret often affects their mood at a rate of 58% – about the rate at which the most affected Introverted types report losing sleep. In other words, what registers as a dented afternoon for one group tends to register as a restless night for another.

The Urge Toward Self-Punishment

Self-punishment is where the toll of regret runs deepest, and it’s also where the fewest people go. Six personality types said more often than not that they feel an urge to punish themselves when they’re feeling regretful, and all six were Introverted. INFPs led once more, with 65% reporting that urge, followed by INFJs at 61% and INTPs at 56%. At the other end, just 25% of ESTPs said they often feel an urge to punish themselves – the lowest rate on this question.

Notice what doesn’t predict this urge – the Thinking–Feeling divide. INTPs and INTJs – both Thinking types – cleared the halfway mark, while ENFJs, a Feeling type, sat at 37%. Self-punishment follows the same Introverted line as dwelling and lost sleep, which suggests it isn’t about how much someone cares but about how long the inner replay runs. And it’s worth saying plainly – a regret that has taught its lesson doesn’t need an enforcer. The types least prone to this urge appear to lose nothing for skipping it.

When Regret Becomes Motivation or a Lesson Learned

Regret isn’t only a burden – it can also be information. Our next two questions asked whether respondents put that information to work. The results split cleanly – learning from regret is nearly universal, while using regret as fuel is not. In every personality type, somewhere between 68% and 96% of respondents said they usually learn from the actions they regret, but agreement dropped sharply when we asked whether regret motivates them, ranging from under 30% to about 65%. The Prospecting and Judging traits shaped both answers – and, tellingly, the types most weighed down by regret were not the ones most likely to convert it into something useful.

Regret as Motivation

This question reshuffled the deck. On most items in this survey, Introverted types reported the strongest reaction to regret. Here, ENTJs came out on top, with 65% saying they often use regret to motivate themselves, while ISTPs finished last at 29% – a spread of more than 36 points. ENFJs and INTJs followed close behind the leaders, and the top four spots all went to personalities with the Judging trait.

The Judging–Prospecting divide seems to matter more here than Introversion or Extraversion, though the split is a tendency rather than a clean break – ISFJs landed in the lower half, and ENTPs edged into the top five. Still, turning regret into motivation tends to rely on a belief that a plan can keep the same mistake from repeating, and that belief sits close to the heart of the Judging trait. Prospecting personalities, who prefer to meet situations as they come, may simply see less use in mining the past for future rules. The more surprising result is what happens when you compare this chart with the one on how often each type feels regret. INFPs, the type most likely to report frequent regret, sat near the bottom, with just 40% saying they use regret to motivate themselves. Feeling regret often and finding it useful turn out to be two very different things – and for some personalities, frequent regret looks more like weight than fuel.

Learning from Regret

This was the single most agreed-upon question in the entire survey. ENFJs led, with 96% saying they usually learn from the actions they regret, and even the lowest-scoring type, ISTPs at 68%, still showed strong agreement. All eight Judging types cleared 84% on this question, with Sentinel personalities – the practical, duty-focused Role in our framework – clustered tightly near the top alongside their Analyst and Diplomat counterparts with the same trait.

The order of the results mirrors the motivation question, but the floor is far higher – almost everyone claims the lesson, even if they don’t claim the drive. The gap between the two questions is where the interesting story lives. INTPs, for instance, agreed at 72% that they usually learn from their regrets, yet only about four in ten said regret motivates them. That combination suggests a kind of quiet cataloging – the insight registers, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into changed behavior. It also chimes with the Prospecting pattern in the next section, where these types proved the most willing to admit making decisions they knew they would regret. Recognizing a pattern and breaking it are separate achievements, and these personality types appear more comfortable than most in acknowledging the distance between the two.

Who Sees Regret Coming – and How Fast It Arrives

Regret usually arrives after the fact, but not always. Some choices come with a warning label attached, and some commitments feel wrong the moment we make them. These three questions asked respondents how well they anticipate regret and how fast it shows up once a decision is made. The answers reveal two separate patterns. Whether people knowingly walk into regret depends heavily on the Judging and Prospecting traits, while regretting a promise made for the future depends far more on Introversion and Extraversion. On timing, though, nearly everyone agreed – regret tends to hit fast.

Knowingly Regrettable Decisions

Few results in this survey sorted themselves as neatly as this one. When asked whether they often make decisions they know they’ll regret, all eight personality types with the Prospecting trait occupied the top eight positions, and all eight Judging types filled the bottom eight. INTPs led at 51% – the only type where agreement reached half – while ENTJs came last at 17%. That’s a spread of roughly 34 points, arranged almost perfectly along a single trait line.

Foresight doesn’t seem to be the missing ingredient here. Prospecting personalities are, by their nature, comfortable making a call in the moment and dealing with the fallout later, which means the warning signal registers without necessarily stopping the decision. Judging types, meanwhile, tend to decide in advance and treat that decision as settled – so by the time they act, the doubt has usually already been resolved one way or the other. There’s likely an element of self-reporting at play too. Admitting that you regularly override your own better judgment requires a certain candor about your habits, and Prospecting personalities are generally less invested in appearing consistent.

Regretting Future Commitments

Say yes today, pay for it next Thursday. This question asked whether respondents often regret agreeing to things in the future, and the answer divided the personality types along a different line than the previous one. INFPs topped the chart, with 74% saying they often regret agreeing to future commitments, while ENTJs sat at the bottom once more, this time at 26%. Every Introverted type landed above 55%, and among Extraverted types, only ENFPs crossed the halfway mark, at 52%.

The logic behind this split is easy to see. For Introverted personalities, a future commitment is a withdrawal from a limited energy account – and it always looks more affordable when the date is still weeks away. Extraverted types are more likely to look forward to the same obligation, because the event itself gives them something rather than costing them something. It’s worth putting this result beside the previous question, though, because the two don’t overlap. The types most likely to knowingly walk into a regrettable decision are not the same ones most likely to regret a commitment. One pattern is about impulse in the moment. This one is about misjudging your own future self.

Speed of Regret

We asked respondents whether regret usually sets in quickly or slowly, and 15 of the 16 personality types chose "quickly." ESTJs were the most emphatic, with 62% reporting quick-onset regret, while ENTJs stood alone on the other side – 51% of ENTJs said their regret builds slowly. The overall spread was narrow, with roughly 13 points separating the fastest type from the slowest, making this one of the most uniform results in the study.

So regret behaves less like a slow realization and more like an alarm. That fits with how people describe the feeling – a decision lands wrong almost immediately, even when the consequences take much longer to appear. The slower variety of regret tends to attach to paths not taken rather than actions taken – the job never applied for, the friendship allowed to lapse – and those only become visible with distance. One detail worth noting is that speed and duration are separate things. INFPs reported some of the fastest onset in the survey while also being the type most likely to say they dwell on regrets, which suggests regret can arrive quickly and still refuse to leave.

What the Data Tells Us About Regret and Personality

Taken together, these results describe regret as three separate things that don’t necessarily travel together. There’s the volume of it, which tracks closely with Introversion and the Turbulent trait. There’s the subject of it, which follows the Thinking and Feeling divide almost cleanly. And there’s the use of it, which belongs mostly to the Judging and Prospecting traits. A person can score high on one of these and low on the others, which is why two people describing "a lot of regret" may be describing completely different experiences.

The finding worth carrying away is the disconnect between how heavily regret lands and how much good it does. The personality types most likely to feel regret often, dwell on it, and lose sleep over it were not the types most likely to turn it into motivation. Frequent regret behaves less like a teacher and more like a tax. At the same time, learning from regretted actions drew stronger agreement than anything else we asked – consistent across every personality type, including the ones who report the least regret overall. The lesson seems to be available to almost everyone, regardless of how much pain accompanies it.

None of this makes any personality type better equipped for life than another. A quick sting of regret that fades by evening protects your sleep, though it may also let a useful lesson slip past unnoticed. A regret that lingers for years costs far more, yet it keeps a decision in view long enough to be examined closely. These look less like better and worse relationships with the past and more like genuinely different ones. And there’s something reassuring in that. Whichever pattern sounds most like yours, the numbers suggest you have plenty of company in it – and that a feeling this common is far more ordinary than it tends to feel at midnight.