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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1436323
Investigating the Content and Correlates of Undergraduate Students' Academic Regrets
Provisionally accepted- University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
The types of academic regrets that college students experience, characteristics of these regrets, and relations to motivational and emotional outcomes were investigated in two studies. Study 1 (N = 152) explored the relations between students' most severe academic regret and outcomes in general university courses, whereas Study 2 (N = 128) explored these relations in the context of a large introductory computer science course. Across both studies, results suggested that students report various academic regrets. Generally, the types of regrets were unrelated to regret intensity, amounts of intrusive thoughts, or whether regrets were considered an omission or commission.Results further suggested that higher regret intensity was associated with motivational and emotional outcomes in the context of general university courses (Study 1), but not in the context of a specific undergraduate computer science course (Study 2). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Keywords: Academic regrets, Emotions, Motivation, Control-Value Theory (CVT), situated expectancy-value theory
Received: 21 May 2024; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ranellucci. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
John Ranellucci, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
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