Regulatory Fit and Resisting Temptation during Goal Pursuit

Because avoiding obstacles to goal attainment is a favored means of prevention-focused self-regulation, the authors proposed that resisting tempting diversions from task completion would better fit a prevention focus than a promotion focus, thus affecting task enjoyment and performance. Whether deciphering encrypted messages (Study 1) or solving math problems (Study 2), when exposed to attractive distracting video clips, participants in a prevention focus reported greater task enjoyment than did participants in a promotion focus, whereas the reverse was true when the distracting clips were not presented. Indeed, prevention-focused participants enjoyed the tasks more when they had to resist temptation than when they did not. In Study 2, prevention-focused participants outperformed promotion-focused participants under distracting (but not nondistracting) conditions, and regression analyses suggested that task enjoyment mediated this effect. Different regulatory states thus appear to differentially equip people to deal with tempting diversions from goal attainment.     

Speed/accuracy decisions in task performance: Built-in trade-off or separate strategic concerns?

In four studies we show that participants’ regulatory focus influences speed/accuracy decisions in different tasks. According to regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997), promotion focus concerns with accomplishments and aspirations produce strategic eagerness whereas prevention focus concerns with safety and responsibilities produce strategic vigilance. Studies 1–3 show faster performance and less accuracy in simple drawing tasks for participants with a chronic or situationally induced promotion focus compared to participants with a prevention focus. These studies also show that as participants move closer to the goal of completing the task, speed increases and accuracy decreases for participants with a promotion focus, whereas speed decreases and accuracy increases for participants with a prevention focus. Study 4 basically replicates these results for situationally induced regulatory focus with a more complex proofreading task. The study found that a promotion focus led to faster proofreading compared to a prevention focus, whereas a prevention focus led to higher accuracy in finding more difficult errors than a promotion focus. Through speed and searching for easy errors, promotion focus participants maximized their proofreading performance. In all four studies, the speed effects were independent of the accuracy effects and vice versa. These results show that speed/accuracy (or quantity/quality) decisions are influenced by the strategic inclinations of participants varying in regulatory focus rather than by a built-in trade-off.     

决策过程中的调节匹配效应及其机制

以大学生为被试,运用实验法探讨了决策过程中调节定向与信息搜索模式之间的匹配效应及其机制。结果显示：(1) 促进定向组被试决策时更偏好基于属性的信息搜索模式,而预防定向组被试决策时更偏好基于选项的信息搜索模式;(2)当两种调节定向组被试分别使用各自所偏好的信息搜索模式制定决策时,达成了调节匹配,相比调节不匹配,这种匹配使被试对其所做选择给出了更积极的评价,即出现了调节匹配效应;(3)加工流畅性可以部分地解释这种调节匹配效应。     

Imagining how you'd feel: the role of motivational experiences from regulatory fit

The authors propose that how people imagine they would feel about making a choice is affected not only by the outcome's anticipated pleasure or pain but also by regulatory fit. Regulatory fit occurs when people pursue a goal in a manner that sustains their regulatory state and it intensifies the motivation to pursue that goal. Considering positive outcomes fits a promotion focus more than a prevention focus, whereas the reverse is true for negative outcomes. Thus, it is proposed that anticipating a desirable choice is more intensely positive for promotion than prevention, and anticipating an undesirable choice is more intensely negative for prevention than promotion. The results of three studies support these predictions. Studies 2 and 3 also demonstrate that motivational intensity underlies the stronger responses. Thus, to understand fully what it means to feel good or bad about a prospective choice, motivational experiences from regulatory fit must be considered.     

Effects of regulatory focus on endorsement of religious beliefs

Regulatory focus has an impact on different judgments. Specifically, promotion focus is directed at achieving positive outcome whereas prevention focus is directed at preventing negative outcomes. Thus, people in promotion focus endorse positive outcome-framed messages whereas people in prevention focus endorse negative outcome-framed messages. In two experiments, we examined whether this holds true for religious beliefs. In Experiment 1, participants were undergraduate students; we found the expected interaction between regulatory focus and verse frame. In Experiment 2, we replicated this finding with participants from conservative Lutheran communities, demonstrating that there was a transient influence of induced regulatory focus. This finding suggests that regulatory focus either is difficult to discount or is not a peripheral cue that is used in heuristic processing only, but an internal state that has a pervasive impact even if people are highly motivated to process information systematically.     

The Effects of Regulatory Focus on Braking Speed1

According to regulatory focus theory ( Higgins, 1997 ), promotion focus is concerned with accomplishments and aspirations leading to strategic eagerness; whereas prevention focus is concerned with safety and responsibilities leading to strategic vigilance. In this study, we investigate how regulatory focus theory can predict braking behavior in driving. In Study 1, participants' assessed regulatory focus strength as measured by chronic personality differences in regulatory focus predicted braking speed, in that chronic prevention‐oriented participants initiated braking earlier, as compared to promotion‐oriented people. In Study 2, we experimentally induced regulatory focus and showed that induced prevention focus enhanced braking speed (i.e., faster), as compared to induced promotion focus.     

When fit matters more: The effect of regulatory fit on adaptation to change

Regulatory fit theory predicts that motivation and performance are enhanced when individuals pursue goals framed in a way that fits their regulatory orientation (promotion vs. prevention focus). Our aim was to test the predictions of the theory when individuals deal with change. We expected and found in three studies that regulatory fit is beneficial only when a prevention focus is involved. In Study 1, an experiment among students, prevention- but not promotion-focused participants performed better in a changed task when it was framed in fit with their regulatory orientation. In Study 2, a survey among employees experiencing organizational changes, only the fit between individual prevention (and not promotion) focus and prevention framing of the changes by the manager was associated with higher employee adaptation to changes. In Study 3, a weekly survey among employees undergoing organizational change, again only prevention regulatory fit was associated with lower employee exhaustion and higher employee work engagement. Theoretical and practical implications of applying regulatory focus theory to organizational change are discussed.     

Achievement orientations from subjective histories of success: Promotion pride versus prevention pride

A new task goal elicits a feeling of pride in individuals with a subjective history of success, and this achievment pride produces anticipatory goal reactions that energize and direct behavior to approach the task goal. By distinguishing between promotion pride and prevention pride, the present paper extends this classic model of achievement motivation. Regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997 ) distinguishes between a promotion focus on hopes and accomplishments (gains) and a prevention focus on safety and responsibilities (non‐losses). We propose that a subjective history of success with promotion‐related eagerness (promotion pride) orients individuals toward using eagerness means to approach a new task goal, whereas a subjective history of success with prevention‐related vigilance (prevention pride) orients individuals toward using vigilance means to approach a new task goal. Studies 1–3 tested this proposal by examining the relations between a new measure of participants' subjective histories of promotion success and prevention success (the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (RFQ)) and their achievement strategies in different tasks. Study 4 examined the relation between participants' RFQ responses and their reported frequency of feeling eager or vigilant in past task engagements. Study 5 used an experimental priming technique to make participants temporarily experience either a subjective history of promotion success or a subjective history of prevention success. For both chronic and situationally induced achievement pride, these studies found that when approaching task goals individuals with promotion pride use eagerness means whereas individuals with prevention pride use vigilance means. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regulatory fit effects on stimulus identification

This article examines the effects of a fit between a person's global regulatory focus and the local task reward structure on perceptual processing and judgment. On each trial, participants were presented with one of two briefly presented stimuli and were asked to identify it. Participants were placed in a promotion focus (a situationally induced sensitivity to gains) or a prevention focus (a situationally induced sensitivity to losses) and were asked to maximize gains or minimize losses. An asymmetric payoff ratio biased the overall reward toward one identification response over the other. Two experiments tested the role of regulatory fit when internal familiarity and perceptual sensitivity were low or high. When familiarity and sensitivity were low, participants in a regulatory fit (promotion focus with gains or a prevention focus with losses) showed greater perceptual sensitivity but no response bias differences, relative to participants in a regulatory mismatch. When familiarity and sensitivity were high, participants in a regulatory fit showed a response bias toward the high-payoff stimulus but no differences in perceptual sensitivity. Speculations are offered on the neurobiological basis of this effect, as well as implications of this work for clinical disorders such as depression.     

Transfer effects from language processing to visual attention dynamics: The impact of orthographic transparency

The consistency between letters and sounds varies across languages. These differences have been proposed to be associated with different reading mechanisms (lexical vs. phonological), processing grain sizes (coarse vs. fine) and attentional windows (whole words vs. individual letters). This study aimed to extend this idea to writing to dictation. For that purpose, we evaluated whether the use of different types of processing has a differential impact on local windowing attention: phonological (local) processing in a transparent language (Spanish) and lexical (global) processing of an opaque language (English). Spanish and English monolinguals (Experiment 1) and Spanish–English bilinguals (Experiment 2) performed a writing to dictation task followed by a global–local task. The first key performance showed a critical dissociation between languages: the response times (RTs) from the Spanish writing to dictation task was modulated by word length, whereas the RTs from the English writing to dictation task was modulated by word frequency and age of acquisition, as evidence that language transparency biases processing towards phonological or lexical strategies. In addition, after a Spanish task, participants more efficiently processed local information, which resulted in both the benefit of global congruent information and the reduced cost of incongruent global information. Additionally, the results showed that bilinguals adapt their attentional processing depending on the orthographic transparency.     

Impulsivity and perception: individual differences in the processing of the local and global dimensions of stimuli

There appears to be an association between a "global" mode of perceptual processing and a cluster of personality traits, one of which is impulsivity. The goal of the present study was to clarify this relationship. Subjects differing in impulsivity (as measured by a self-report inventory) performed speeded cardsorting tasks. They sorted stimuli consisting of large letters made up of smaller letters. Highly impulsive subjects had no more difficulty than other subjects in ignoring the large, "global," letters when they tried to attend to the smaller, "local," letters of which they were composed, nor were they more vulnerable than other subjects to Stroop-like response interference produced by the global letters. High impulsives did have particular difficulty when the task required that they integrate the information provided by the local and global letters. This finding can be explained in terms of individual differences in the value placed on speed relative to accuracy in information processing.     

Strategies of self‐regulation in goal attainment versus goal maintenance

We propose that there exists an important difference between attainment and maintenance in terms of the goal pursuit strategies for which they call. Specifically, we propose that goal attainment calls for the use of eager approach strategies, whereas goal maintenance calls for the use of vigilant avoidance strategies. We distinguish between attainment versus maintenance as two different goal pursuit conditions on the one hand, and promotion versus prevention focus as two different self‐regulatory concerns on the other hand. We then use insights from Regulatory Fit Theory to make predictions concerning the interactive effects of these two motivational dimensions on outcome valuations. Consistent with our proposal about attainment and maintenance, we found that participants in a promotion focus valued the outcome of an attainment task more than did participants in a prevention focus, whereas the opposite was true for a maintenance task. Implications for maintenance‐related phenomena such as belief perseverance effects are subsequently discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

People higher in self-control do not necessarily experience more happiness: Regulatory focus also affects subjective well-being

A number of studies have shown that self-control is a key variable influencing subjective well-being (SWB). The present research demonstrated the effects of regulatory focus on SWB. Study 1 surveyed college students and found that (1) promotion-dominant people reported more SWB than prevention-dominant people, even after controlling for the effect of TSC as a covariate, and (2) the direct effect of promotion focus on SWB was significant, but the direct effect of prevention focus on SWB was not significant in the model with TSC as a mediator. Study 2 manipulated situational regulatory foci and required participants to execute a self-control task. The results showed that the two groups did not differ in task performance, or self-control, however, the promotion-focused group reported more task pleasure. These results indicate that promotion focused people are happier than prevention focused people during goal pursuit, that people can chronically and situationally benefit from promotion focus, and moreover, that people higher in self-control do not necessarily experience more SWB.     

Investigating the stability of and relationships among global/local processing measures

Global/local stimuli have been used to estimate global processing biases in individuals and groups, as well as in response to various manipulations. Throughout the literature, multiple different versions of global/local stimuli have been used, such as traditional hierarchical letters and numbers (i.e., Navon letters), abstract hierarchical shapes, and high- and low-spatial-frequency gratings and faces. However, currently it is unclear how reliable or stable performance is on these measures within individuals over time, and whether these seemingly different measures are tapping into the same underlying process. As such, the purpose of the present study was to examine the stability of individual performance on three distinct global/local measures over time and to examine the relationships among the measures. In two studies, we examined the reliability of the biases within, and the relationships among, standard Navon letters in a traditional interference task, hierarchical shapes in a forced choice task, and superimposed high- and low-pass spatial frequency faces in a forced choice task. In both studies, participants completed all three of the tasks, and then returned 7–10 days later to again complete the same tasks. The degree of global/local bias within an individual was found to be highly reliable in the hierarchical shape task and the spatial frequency face task, but less reliable in the traditional Navon letter task. Interestingly, in both studies we found that none of the three measures of global bias were related to each other. Therefore, while these measures do appear to be reliable over time, they may be tapping into distinct aspects of global/local processing.     

Global-local orientation congruency effects in visual search

In a visual search task, subjects had to decide which of 2 possible target letters was presented among 12 distractor letters. The 13 characters were arranged to form a global Navon-type letter. The global letter and the local letters (target and distractors) were independently presented in four different viewer-related orientations. When the global letter and the target were frequently congruently oriented, the response times increased with growing orientation disparity between them. This global-target congruency effect was independent from target identity (Experiment 1), and it diminished when global and target orientations were not correlated (Experiment 2). The results indicate that the orientation of the global letter can be deliberately used in order to facilitate the processing of congruently oriented local targets. The alignment of a spatial frame of reference is discussed as the most probable process underlying this facilitation.     

Regulatory fit from attribute‐based versus alternative‐based processing in decision making

This paper discusses the fit between attribute-based versus alternative-based processing and regulatory focus, and its impact on decision outcome valuation. Attribute-based processing was found to occur more frequently under prevention focus, whereas alternative-based processing occurred more frequently under promotion focus. The fit between prevention/promotion focus and attribute-based/alternative-based processing was found to enhance satisfaction with choices and the perceived monetary value of chosen options. Moreover, the effect of fit on outcome valuation was found to be mediated by ease of processing. Finally, the effects of fit on ease of processing and outcome valuation disappeared when consumers first practiced to process information based on either attributes or alternatives.     

Preconscious analysis of global structure: Evidence from masked priming

According to the global precedence hypothesis, the perceptual processing of complex objects proceeds from global structure to the analysis of local elements. In the present study, we used a masked priming paradigm to explore whether the global or the local level of hierarchical letters is analysed at preconscious processing stages. Experiment 1 found masked priming only after global prime letters in focused‐attention conditions. Experiment 2 used a divided‐attention task in which attention was not focused specifically on either level of hierarchy and did not find any priming. Experiment 3 used otherwise the same task as Experiment 2 but biased attention either to the global or the local level by manipulating the probability that targets appeared at one level. Priming was found after global prime letters in the global‐bias condition but not in the local‐bias condition. Experiments 4a and 4b suggest that the size of the local letters was not responsible for the lack of priming after local primes. The results suggest a priority for global processing already at a preconscious level and that attentional factors may modulate processes at this level.     

Decide like Lionel Messi! The impact of regulatory focus on divergent thinking in sports

According to Higgins, the regulatory focus theory states that in terms of motivational information processing, it makes a difference whether people have a promotion or prevention focus. A focus on aspirations is labeled as promotion focus, whereas a focus on responsibility is called prevention focus. In our study, the theory will be applied to the area of sport decision making. We showed that soccer players make different decisions in a sport‐specific divergent‐thinking task depending on their regulatory focus (promotion vs. prevention). Promotion‐framed athletes were able to produce more original, flexible, and adequate solutions than prevention‐framed athletes. Theoretical and practical implications for sport psychology are discussed.     

Regulatory focus and temporal distance

Four studies identify and examine a temporal component to regulatory focus. Results support the assertion that promotion focus tends to predominate for temporally distant goals, whereas proximal goals are characterized by more balanced consideration of both promotion- and prevention-focused concerns. In Study 1, students rated the importance of promotion and prevention goals at two points in time: 2 weeks before and a few minutes before an examination. Promotion goal importance increased with temporal distance, whereas prevention goal importance remained constant over time. Study 2 replicated this pattern holding the actual time-span constant (3.5 weeks) and varying only the psychological sense of proximity/distance. In Study 3, subjects rated the regulatory focus of goals at varying points in time, both future and past. The temporal effect was replicated for both time periods. Study 4 provided evidence for the reverse effect, that of regulatory focus on the perceived temporal distance of future goals. Taken together, these findings suggest an integration across research domains that links regulatory focus to temporal perspective for both prospective and retrospective judgments.     

Do response time advantage and interference reflect the order of processing of global- and local-level information?

Navon's (1977) global precedence hypothesis was based primarily on the joint occurrence of two effects: a response time (RT) advantage for identifying global targets, and interference by global distractors on responding to local targets. Although the hypothesis has been questioned on the basis of experiments in which it has been shown that a local RT advantage and local interference can occur, it is still frequently assumed that these two effects are a valid measure of the order in which local and global levels of structure are processed. In the present experiment, this assumption was examined. Subjects identified target letters that occurred randomly at the global or local level in a divided-attention task. The visual angle subtended by the stimulus pattern was varied, a manipulation known to affect the relative speed of response to local- or global-level information. Local targets were identified faster than global targets at the larger visual angles, but there was no difference in RT at the smallest visual angle. Despite this change in RT advantage, the interference effect did not change as a function of the visual angle of the stimulus pattern. Moreover, global distractors interfered with responding to local targets but local targets had no effect on responding to global targets, which is exactly the opposite of the finding one would expect if RT advantage and interference reflected order of processing. These findings are not consistent with the assumption that RT advantage and interference reflect order of processing in a simple way.