Do we really feel stronger emotions when we act? It depends on how you ask

Two friends each lose €1,200 in the stock market. One changed his portfolio the day before the crash; the other left his investments untouched. It’s the same outcome for both investors, but who feels worse? 

Psychologists have long believed the answer is simple: the person who acted feels worse. This idea—that actions trigger stronger emotional responses than inaction—has been a fundamental principle of behavioral science for decades. 

A core theory in behavioral science is that, if the consequence is negative, people tend to regret taking action more than doing nothing

But research by Ioannis Evangelidis, Associate Professor at Esade, and Manissa Gunadi (EADA) challenges this assumption. Their studies suggest that only a minority of people believe others feel stronger emotions when the same outcome follows action rather than inaction. Past research may have overestimated this bias because respondents were not given the option to say that both individuals—the one who acted and the one who did nothing—felt the same. 

Does action lead to stronger feelings?

A core theory in behavioral science is that people regret taking action more than doing nothing if the consequence is negative. Also, they feel more pride when a positive result follows a deliberate decision. These assumptions have influenced theories of decision-making, moral judgment, and even economic behavior. 

This view was largely founded on the work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 1980s among others. In their often-cited investor scenario, participants judged that someone who lost money after switching stocks would feel worse than someone who lost the same amount by sticking with their original investment. 

But studies like this often rely on binary questions, such as, “Who feels worse: the one who acted or the one who didn’t?” This type of question format leaves no room for saying the emotional impact was the same. 

Evangelidis and Gunadi ask a simple but powerful question: Do people really believe that action leads to stronger feelings, or are their responses inadvertently being shaped by the structure of the question itself? 

How question design changes what we think

Across seven experiments using scenarios from classic research on this topic, the authors gave participants questionnaires asking them to assess how fictional characters might feel after experiencing outcomes resulting from action or inaction. The studies covered both negative emotions, like regret, and positive emotions such as elation. 

When participants were only given two options, such as choosing which of the two fictional characters felt better, they tended to say the person who had taken action felt stronger emotions. But when offered a third option—'they feel the same’—the majority typically chose it. In some cases, the questionnaires even offered the option to provide open-ended answers, and still, most judged that action and inaction led to similar feelings when told that this was a viable option.  

In the case of the two investors losing funds in the stock market, many people would say that both investors felt equally as bad about losing the money—the fact that one took action by switching his portfolio before the loss, and the other did nothing before the loss, need not impact how we perceive these people to feel. 

“People may not strongly believe that actions result in more intense emotion than inaction,” the authors write, “but rather construct this belief depending on how the question is asked.” 

Even when asked to rate emotions independently, rather than compare them, most people still indicated similar emotional intensity regardless of whether the outcome followed action or inaction. This suggests that the so-called ‘action bias’ may not be a genuine belief but rather a consequence of how the question was structured. Only a small group of participants consistently rate action as causing more emotion, but they were a minority in six of the seven studies. 

These findings shouldn’t be confused with the concept of framing, where people’s perceptions are influenced by how information is presented. There’s a subtle but key difference. What the study examined was not the emotional tone or suggestiveness, but rather the way the data was collected. This is known as an effect of elicitation: the method by which beliefs are measured. In this case, whether participants were obliged to choose between two options or permitted to express neutrality played a fundamental role in determining the results. 

What this means in real life

For behavioral scientists, this could change everything. If commonly accepted beliefs about emotion are based on how questions are structured, it may be time to re-evaluate long-standing theories. 

But the findings extend beyond academia into everyday life. Think of a performance review at work, where a manager is told to choose which employee exhibited the worst judgment, the one who made a change that failed, or the one who remained inactive and still failed. If the manager is forced to pick one employee as being the ‘worst’, and there’s no option to say that both performed equally, then the consequences for the ‘worst’ employee could be severe.  

Our judgments about others’ emotions influence how we empathize, give advice, and anticipate decisions

Articles in the public domain have already shown how framing can influence everything from healthcare choices to financial behavior during a crisis. This research adds another layer of concern: even a subtle change in response format can alter what we believe people think or feel. 

“Our findings suggest that some classic demonstrations of an action effect may not reflect revealed beliefs,” write Evangelidis and Gunadi, “but rather responses constructed on the spot based on how affect is elicited.” 

Importantly, the study asked participants to assess how others felt, not how they themselves would feel in a given situation. Still, this matters. As the authors point out, our judgments about others’ emotions influence how we empathize, how we give advice, and how we anticipate decisions. Our assumptions about others' emotions could even shape how we think about our own decisions. 

It's all in the question

This research challenges previous findings that people believe emotional reactions are stronger when outcomes follow action rather than inaction. Instead, it reveals that such judgments are often constructed on the fly, shaped by how questions are framed and how beliefs are elicited. 

It’s a subtle but important insight. If the way we ask questions can change what people say others feel, it might also shape how we design policies, communicate risks, and even interact with each other. 

And if our feelings depend on how we’re prompted, how many of our personal “truths” are more fragile than they appear?