Distinguishing Between Need Support and Regulatory Focus with LIWC

Abstract

The need-support model bridges regulatory focus theory and self-determination theory. Research on this model has shown that support of needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (key constructs in self-determination theory) is higher in experiences of pursuing hopes versus duties (key constructs in regulatory focus theory). The current research used LIWC 2015's standard dictionary to examine differences between descriptions of high and low support of these needs (N = 941), descriptions of pursuing hopes and duties (N = 1,047), high need support and hopes, and low need support and duties. As expected, descriptions of high need support and hopes were more emotionally positive than low need support and duties, whereas high need support and duties showed more attention to social relationships than low need support and hopes. These and additional findings of this research support the need-support model's proposal that regulatory focus and need support do not reduce to each other.

Feeling Socially Connected and Focusing on Growth: Relationships With Wellbeing During a Major Holiday in the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Research shows that greater satisfaction of all three needs correlates very strongly with wellbeing, feelings of personal integrity, and feeling volitional (for reviews, see Deci and Ryan, 2000;Ryan and Deci, 2017). Satisfactions of these needs tend to be highly correlated (e.g., Sheldon and Hilpert, 2012;Chen et al, 2015;Vaughn, 2017Vaughn, , 2019, and balanced satisfaction of these needs appears to be important for wellbeing, both within persons (Sheldon and Niemiec, 2006) and between life domains (Milyavskaya et al, 2009). With that said, "in different settings, any one of the three needs will emerge to 'take the lead' in terms of its association with wellness outcomes, even as the other two remain important" (Ryan and Deci, 2017, p. 247).…”

Feeling socially connected and focusing on growth: Relationships with well-being during a major holiday in the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Research shows that greater satisfaction of all three needs correlates very strongly with well-being, feelings of personal integrity, and feeling volitional (for reviews, see Deci & Ryan, 2000;Ryan & Deci, 2017). Satisfactions of these needs tend to be highly correlated (e.g., Chen et al, 2015;Sheldon & Hilpert, 2012;Vaughn, 2017Vaughn, , 2019Vaughn, Garvey, & Chalachan, 2020), and balanced satisfaction of these needs appears to be important for wellbeing, both within persons (Sheldon & Niemiec, 2006) and between life domains (Milyavskaya et al, 2009). With that said, "in different settings, any one of the three needs will emerge to 'take the lead' in terms of its association with wellness outcomes, even as the other two remain important" (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 247).…”

“…Grant & Higgins, 2003). In general, promotion focus feels better than prevention focus does (e.g., Scholer et al, 2019b;Vaughn, 2017Vaughn, , 2019Vaughn, Burkins, & Judd, 2020). In part, this difference reflects how promotionfocused goals are oriented toward gains and away from their absence, whereas preventionfocused goals are oriented away from losses and toward their absence (Higgins, 1997(Higgins, , 1998Scholer et al, 2019a).…”

“…Thus, compared with people in a prevention focus, those in a promotion focus experience more intense positive affect (Higgins, 1997(Higgins, , 1998Idson et al, 2000), selectively attend more to positive information (Yoon et al, 2012), and recall more positive information about the self (Scholer et al, 2014). Additionally, studies that have used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software (LIWC; Pennebaker et al, 2015) to analyze thousands of descriptions of promotion and prevention-focused experiences have found that participants describe promotion experiences more positively than prevention experiences (Vaughn, 2018(Vaughn, , 2019Vaughn, Burkins, & Judd, 2020;cf. Scholer et al, 2010).…”

“…Scholer et al, 2010). Research also has shown that participants report more satisfaction of needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in promotion-focused experiences than in prevention-focused ones (Kim et al, 2019;Vaughn, 2017Vaughn, , 2019. 1 With that said, people tend not to view prevention-focused experiences as need thwarting (Kim et al, 2019;Vaughn, 2017Vaughn, , 2019Vaughn, Burkins, & Judd, 2020), and LIWC analyses of prevention-focused experiences show that the emotional tone of prevention experiences is much more positive than of experiences that are explicitly low in need satisfaction (Vaughn, 2019).…”