Exceptionality Effect

The exceptionality effect is the pattern by which people feel stronger regret, self-blame or a sense of injustice about a bad outcome when it followed an unusual action than when the identical outcome followed routine behavior. Daniel Kahneman and Dale T. Miller introduced the idea in 1986 as part of norm theory, arguing that people judge events against easily imagined alternatives, and that an exceptional action is easier to mentally undo than a routine one, which is why exceptional bad outcomes feel more avoidable and provoke a stronger emotional reaction; their original illustrations included a driver who has an accident after taking an unfamiliar route for variety, judged to feel more regret than one who has the same accident on a routine commute. A 2020 meta-analysis pooling 48 studies and 4,212 participants found a medium-to-strong exceptionality effect, with an overall effect size of 0.60 across measures of regret, counterfactual thinking and self-blame.