Abstract: Regret is a complex negative social emotion whose generation depends on counterfactual thinking to the better outcomes provided by the alternative choice. It influences decision-making, and has important impacts on people’s physical and mental health in everyday life. Compared with disappointment, regret is different with respect to its phenomenology, the prerequisites of generation as well as the subsequent appraisals. Regret is affected by individual’s behavioral manners, personality, attribution as well as information of behavioral outcomes. Functional brain areas involved in expectancy and experience of regret mainly include Orbitofrontal cortex, Anterior cingulated, Hippocampus, Amygdala. The experimental approaches and technological measures need to be improved in further studies of regret. Meanwhile, the cognitive mechanism and neural substrate of regret remain to be further explored in future

Key words: regret, disappointment, cognitive mechanism, neural substrate, orbitofrontal cortex