The development of children's ideal and ought self-guides: parenting, temperament, and individual differences in guide strength

Regulatory focus theory (RFT; Higgins, 1997) predicts that individual differences in the strength of promotion (ideal) and prevention (ought) orientations emerge from patterns of parent/child interactions that emphasize making good things happen versus keeping bad things from happening. This article examines the development of individual differences in the strength of children's promotion and prevention goals and presents selected findings from three studies exploring the origins of regulatory focus. We found a three-factor structure for parenting behaviors that differentiated between the presence/absence of positive outcomes versus the presence/absence of negative outcomes in two different data sets and validated that factor structure by examining its associations with maternal temperament. In turn, the parenting factors predicted individual differences in children's orientations to ideal and ought guides, and those associations were moderated by individual differences in child temperament.