Problem 2 – Avoiding and approaching goals
When to begin? Regulatory focus and initiating goal pursuit (Freitas et
al., 2002)
Understand why the authors propose that a prevention focus fosters preferences to initiate
action earlier than does a promotion focus + why the authors control for valence &
expectancy + understand methods + know/understand main results.
The authors propose that a prevention focus fosters preferences to initiate action earlier than
does a promotion focus. Regulatory focus and perceived task valence each accounted for
unique variance in participants’ task-initiation preferences.
People use their estimates of severity and durability of emotional responses to events to help
them decide when to pursue particular actions:
People usually prefer performing single desirable actions in the immediate rather than
distant future.
When actions are considered parts of sequences, people often prefer to place more
desirable actions toward the end of sequences, presumably to attain experiences that
improve in hedonic value.
People also prefer action sequences in which outcomes quickly, rather than slowly,
grow increasingly positive or decreasingly negative.
How one regulates pleasure and pain, also can influence when one initiates action.
Following an ideal self-guide heightens one’s sensitivity to opportunities to advance
goal attainment, whereas following an ought self-guide heightens one’s sensitivity to
impediments to goal attainment.
People can construe standards as minimal goals they must attain or as maximal
goals they hope to attain. Minimal goals thus differentiate negative from nonnegative
events, whereas maximal goals differentiate positive from non-positive events.
o People in a prevention focus should experience objectives as minimal goals.
o People in a promotion focus should experience objectives as maximal goals.
Classic Expectancy × Value Effects, whereby people try to maximize utility by
selecting actions high in both success likelihood and value, are larger for people in a
promotion focus than they are for people in a prevention focus.
o A prevention focus facilitates viewing an adopted goal as a necessity,
whereas a promotion focus facilitates viewing an adopted goal as one of many
opportunities for accomplishment.
These effects of regulatory focus on people’s tendencies to view objectives as minimal or
maximal goals should affect when people initiate action.
Goal as a minimal standard prevention focus should lead one to initiate relatively
quickly goal-directed action.
Goal as a maximum standard promotion focus should lead one to feel little
pressure to initiate immediately any single action.
they propose that a prevention focus fosters preferences to initiate action earlier than
does a promotion focus.
Study 1
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,Study 1 tested whether individual differences in regulatory focus accounted for variability in
participants’ preferences for when to begin a hypothetical task.
They asked people to write an essay and the participants had to indicate when they
would begin writing it.
Expectations: increases in chronic prevention focus to predict earlier preferences for
writing the essay but increases in chronic promotion focus to predict later preferences
for writing the essay.
Regulatory focus was assessed via reaction time.
o Attitude accessibility = the amount of time required to respond to attitude
queries (= vragen), with highly accessible or strong attitudes fostering faster
reaction times.
o Chronically accessible ideal and ought self-guides, reflected in fast reaction
times to relevant queries, indicate stronger promotion and prevention focuses,
respectively.
They also assessed and controlled for how interesting participants expected the task
to be and for how well they expected to perform on it (= two key aspects of its
valence).
One’s interest in an action denotes the event’s response elicitation (i.e., whether one
wants to engage in the action), whereas one’s expectancy of success at an action
denotes the action’s goal supportiveness (i.e., whether one expects one’s
engagement of the action to facilitate goal satisfaction).
METHOD
For each attribute listed, the computer recorded three response times: (a) the time it
took each participant to type each entire attribute after being prompted to do so by
the computer, (b) the time it took each participant to make the self-guide extent rating
for the attribute after being prompted to do so by the computer, and (c) the time it
took each participant to make the actual extent rating for the attribute after being
prompted to do so by the computer.
Participants had to answer different questions related to the scenario on an 11-point
scale.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Increases in ought strength were associated with decreases in participants’ preferred
time to begin writing the essay. In contrast, increases in ideal strength were
associated with increases in participants’ preferred time to begin writing the essay.
Increases in the accessibility of participants’ ought self-guides were associated with
earlier preferences for when to write the essay, whereas increases in the accessibility
of participants’ ideal self-guides were associated with later preferences for when to
write the essay, and these findings were independent of participants’ perceptions of
the valence of the essay task.
Study 2
If regulatory focus affects people’s preferences for when to initiate action, then framing a task
in prevention terms should lead people to prefer beginning it earlier than should framing it in
promotion terms.
Method
o Participants received a questionnaire titled “Academic Imagery
Questionnaire,” which, as in Study 1, asked them to imagine applying for a
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, fellowship. Unlike in Study 1, however, participants were assigned randomly to
receive either promotion- or prevention-focused framings of the fellowship.
Results and discussion
o Participants who received the prevention framing preferred writing the essay
significantly earlier.
o Task framing did not affect participants’ perceptions of task valence.
o People prefer to begin prevention-focused tasks earlier than promotion-
focused tasks. In neither Study 1 nor Study 2, however, did participants’
perceptions of task valence relate to their timing preferences study 3.
Study 3
Participants indicated their preferences for when during an experimental session they would
want to begin an anagram task framed either in promotion or prevention terms. Because
participants’ timing preferences concerning this task would not affect their success at it, we
expected to find a clearer relation between their task-valence perceptions and their task-
initiation preferences.
Method
o As a result of random assignment, each participant received one of two
versions of a Puzzle Solutions questionnaire (promotion or prevention
focused).
o They acted like the participants had to do several experiments and that the
participant could chose when to do this one.
Results and discussion
o Participants in the prevention- and promotion-focused framing conditions
perceived the task to be very similar in valence.
o Consistent with findings reported in Studies 1 and 2, participants who received
the prevention framing reported preferring to perform the anagram task earlier
in the experimental session than did those who received the promotion
framing.
o Participants’ ratings of task valence correlated negatively with when during an
experimental session they would want to perform the task.
o Both regulatory-focus and anticipated task valence accounted for unique and
significant amounts of variance in participants’ timing intentions.
o This demonstration of independent effects of action valence and regulatory
focus on timing preferences suggests that one’s regulatory focus, apart from
one’s perceptions of action valence, can influence when one initiates action.
Study 4
Consistent with the hypothesis that a prevention focus fosters preferences to devote
immediate attention to the task at hand, we predicted that when facing an array of tasks,
people would complete prevention-focused tasks before promotion-focused tasks.
Participants were recruited for a study in which they would solve 20 anagrams and in which
their compensation would hinge on their performance. There was no measure of task
valence.
Results and discussion
o Consistent with the prediction that participants would attempt to solve
prevention-framed anagrams before promotion-framed anagrams, across
each of the first 10 trials each proportion of participants choosing a
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, prevention-framed rather than a promotion-framed anagram was greater
than .5.
o Participants working through an array of anagrams tended to complete the
prevention-framed anagrams before the promotion-framed anagrams.
General discussion
Previous research has shown that the pleasure and pain people expect actions to deliver
helps determine when they choose to perform single actions and how they choose to arrange
actions in temporal sequences.
Study 1 showed that increases in chronic prevention focus were associated with
earlier preferred dates at which to begin a hypothetical academic task, whereas
increases in chronic promotion focus were associated with later preferred dates at
which to begin the task.
In Study 2, participants who received a prevention-focused framing of the same
academic task preferred earlier task commencement than did participants who
received a promotion-focused framing.
Studies 1 and 2 also assessed participants’ perceptions of task valence and found
that they were unrelated to participants’ action-initiation preferences.
The third study showed that regulatory focus and perceived task valence exerted
independent effects on participants’ preferences for when during an experimental
session they would want to perform an anagram task.
In Study 4, participants working through an array of 10 prevention- and 10 promotion-
framed anagrams tended to complete first the prevention-framed anagrams.
Regulatory focus theory accounts for the current pattern of results better than do theories
distinguishing between self-regulation in relation to positive or negative reference points.
The findings showed that whether concerning individual actions or actions within
sequences, prevention framing led to earlier preferences for action initiation than did
promotion framing.
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