Do hedonic motives moderate regulatory focus motives? Evidence from the framing of persuasive messages.

Abstract

Research on regulatory focus has established a regulatory matching effect: The persuasiveness of a message is enhanced when regulatory orientations of message and perceiver match (i.e., both are promotion or both are prevention). We report evidence that varying the hedonic outcome reverses this effect. We manipulated hedonic outcome by explicitly stating pleasurable versus painful outcomes as part of the message frame as well as by priming perceivers to focus on either pleasurable or painful outcomes. When both message and perceiver were focused on pleasurable outcomes, we replicated the regulatory matching effect. However, the matching effect reversed when the hedonic outcome of the message was opposed to that of the perceiver (i.e., one was pleasurable and the other painful). Under these conditions, messages that mismatched the perceivers' regulatory orientation were more persuasive (i.e., promotion message for a prevention oriented perceiver or vice versa). We also examined the persuasion effects when both message and perceiver were focused on painful outcomes and found that the regulatory matching effect re-emerged. The reversal of the regulatory matching effect by hedonic outcome strongly suggests that hedonic motives (approach of pleasure vs. avoidance of pain) and regulatory focus motives are distinct constructs. This is important because contrary to theoretical statements these constructs have often been confounded.

Loss/Gain Framing, Dose, and Reactance: A Message Experiment

“…A goal of second‐generation loss/gain framing research is to unpack the variation in framing effects by examining possible mediators and moderators (Cassotti et al., ; Covey, ; Jensen et al., ; Latimer et al., ; Malaviya & Brendl, ; Pabst et al., ; Rothman & Updegraff, ; Vezich et al., ). To this end, this study tested reactance as a mediator and dose as a moderator of loss/gain framing effects in the context of physical activity and health risks.…”

“…They proposed that lack of significant summary effects across studies likely indicated a need for new methodological approaches, including testing of mediation and moderation effects. Answering this call, second‐generation framing research has begun to explore mediators (e.g., message processes) and moderators (e.g., message features) to illuminate specific conditions under which loss or gain frames are more likely to persuade (Cassotti et al., ; Covey, ; Jensen et al., ; Latimer, Salovey, & Rothman, ; Malaviya & Brendl, ; Pabst, Brand, & Wolf, ; Rothman & Updegraff, ; Vezich, Katzman, Ames, Falk, & Lieberman, ).…”

Regulatory Focus, Task Engagement and Divergent Thinking

“…In Hypothesis 2 we investigated the regulatory fit effect. This effect suggests that the appeal of a message is enhanced when it matches the regulatory focus of the individual (Maliviya & Brendl, ). We argued that this regulatory fit effect explains the greater creative performance of promotion‐focused individuals on divergent thinking tasks.…”

Chronic Regulatory Focus: Resist impulse consumption or let it happen?

“…On valence, according to Malaviya and Brendl (2014), the self-regulatory system may have a desired end state (i.e., positive reference value) or an unwanted end state (i.e., negative reference value) functioning as a standard. Also, in relation to the direction of the movement that has been stimulated, the literature distinguishes approach as being a positive state of the person and avoidance as being a negative state (Higgins et al, 1994;Lai, Hsu, & Li, 2018).…”