Lecture 1 Regulatory Focus Theory Flashcards
Regulatory focus theory
Explains how people’s motivations to approach or avoid pain shape their behavior and decision making
Promotion-focused
Seek growth, achievements and pleasure, focusing on advancing towards their ideals
Prevention-focused
Concentrate on avoiding losses and fulfilling responsibilities, prioritizing security and adherence to rules
Chronic orientation
Refers to a person’s long-term tendency to prioritize either promotion or prevention focus
It is orthogonal, meaning someone can have both promotion and prevention focus
Temporal orientation
How these regulatory focus manifest at a specific time or in a particular situation
It is dependent, meaning one orientation will dominate at a given moment, influenced by context or external factors
Authoritative parenting style
Encourage promotion-focus by support
Authoritarian parenting style
Foster a prevention focus
Promotion focus factors
Motivated by positive role models
More politically liberal
Activates areas linked to intuition and Reward sensitivity
Higher self-esteem
Process information eagerly
Independent self-view
Set personal goals
Prevention focus factors
Motivated by criticism
Prioritise accuracy to speed
Detail-oriented
Focus on the details
Activates regions associated with self-awareness and social adaptation
Lower self-esteem
Interdependent
Value their role in social networks
Research insights - consumer behavior
Promotion-focused: prefer luxury and are inspired by positive role models
Prevention-focused: value reliability, and are motivated by criticism
Regulatory fit
The way people approach a goal matches their personal motivational style.
This alignment makes them feel “right” about what they’re doing, which increases their engagement and performance.
Promotion-focus: potential gains and rewards
Prevention-focus: avoiding risks and losses
Transactional leaders
Prevention focused
Clarify tasks
Initiate structure
Maintain status quo
Improve productivity
Monitor and correct errors
Transformational leaders
Promotion focused
Innovative
Optimistic
High expectations
Experiment - product framing
Promotion-focus: willing to pay more when a product emphasized gains
Prevention-focus: willing to pay more when a product avoids losses
Attempts to change/influence behavior can…
Induce a prevention focus
change inherently through uncertainty, risk, and potential losses
There needs to be a fit between…
Product
Message
Framing
Individuals being influenced
The way they decide
Behavior of the influencer
Motivational orientation differs systematically with…
Age (young people want to advance themselves, old people want to preserve their health)
Gender (women are more prevention focus than men)
Culture (collectivistic is more preventon focused)
Type of decision
Resistance
People often resist change
Voters tend to stick with preferred political party
Why do people resist change?
Reactance
Endowment
Distance
Uncertainty
Reactance
Need for autonomy
‘When pushed, I push back’
Provide choices for people
Example reactance
Tide Pod challenge
An online article encouraged people to eat tide pods as they look like candy
People wouldn’t stop eating them even though it was dangerous
Telling people not to eat them actually encouraged people to eat them more
Solution reactance
Provide a menu, give people choices
Start with understanding
Endowment
I prefer the status quo
People’s tendency to favor what they already have over other alternatives
Makes it difficult to change to something new
Why?
Loss aversion
Switching costs (it takes a lot of effort to familiarise yourself with a new product, download new apps
Solution to endowment
Show costs of inaction
Subtly guiding people into ‘burning their ships’ - obliged to switch to Microsoft 10 as Windows 7 was not supported anymore
Appeal to what people lost, but can regain again - ‘Make America Great Again’
Distance
Refers to how far an idea, message, or proposal feels from what a person already believes or values
When something is too far from my backyard, I am less persuaded by it
Social judgment theory
This theory explains that people’s attitudes or positions on a topic can be divided into three areas:
Latitude of Acceptance: Ideas or messages that are close to what a person already believes and are easily accepted.
Latitude of Rejection: Ideas or messages that are too different from what a person believes, and they will reject them immediately.
Latitude of Non-commitment: Ideas or messages that fall somewhere in the middle
How to deal with distance?
Find the movable middle
For people who are further away: ask for less - Biden was chosen over Sanders because he is closer to the middle and Sanders was too left winged
Switch the field to an ‘unsticking point’
Uncertainty
Outcome and probability of different outcomes is unknown
Diffusion of orientation (Rogers)
Innovators: risk-takers and the first to try new things.
Early Adopters: influential and help spread the idea to others.
Early Majority: practical, waiting for the innovation to prove its worth.
Late Majority: adopts the innovation once it has become mainstream and widely accepted.
Moderators of the level of resistance
Social pressure
Coercive marketing
Lack of trust in the brand
Change to established outcomes
Perceived risk and uncertainty
Self-determination theory
Competence
Autonomy
Relatedness
Evidence-based ideas to elicit promotion focus
Asking people for their desire and aspirations
People become more promotion-focused by viewing nature
