Eager feelings and vigilant reasons: Regulatory focus differences in judging moral wrongs.

Abstract

For over a decade, moral psychologists have been actively researching the processes underlying moral judgments that are made intuitively without reference to an action’s concrete harms or injustice, such as the well-known case of non-procreative, consensual incest. We suggest that the reason some judge this scenario as wrong (using intuitive feelings) and others do not (using deliberative reasons) is due to an important motivational distinction. Consistent with this view, across seven studies, we demonstrate that negative judgments of such intuitive moral scenarios are more intense when processed in the promotion focus compared to the prevention focus, and that this is due to differences in whether eager (intuitive) versus vigilant (deliberative) means are employed in judging these moral wrongs. By examining various boundary conditions for this phenomenon and foundations for these judgments, we learn about the overall differences between promotion and prevention regarding how proscriptive judgments are processed, and begin to integrate these differences with existing theories in moral psychology.

Beyond outcomes: How regulatory focus motivates consumer goal pursuit processes

“…To expand on these findings, follow‐up research investigated the promotion system's reliance on affect as an evaluation heuristic; results revealed that promotion‐focused individuals give more weight to their affective experiences than to reasons when making product evaluations, whereas the opposite is true for prevention‐focused individuals (Pham & Avnet, ). Additionally, this feelings‐versus‐reasons distinction is not specific to the consumer domain; similar preferences are found among promotion‐ versus prevention‐focused individuals when forming impressions of social targets (Pham & Avnet, ) and making moral judgments (Cornwell & Higgins, ).…”

“…One framework that offers such insight is regulatory focus theory (Higgins, , ). Since its introduction over 20 years ago, much has been written about regulatory focus theory's contributions to the field's understanding of goal pursuit, judgment, and decision‐making both broadly (e.g., Cornwell & Higgins, ; Freitas & Higgins, ; Higgins, ) and specifically in the domain of consumer behavior (e.g., Pham & Chang, ; Pham & Higgins, ; Werth & Foerster, ). The bulk of this work has been concerned with the different end states that constitute people's goals—both those that relate to individuals’ hopes and aspirations (i.e., promotion goals) and to their duties and responsibilities (i.e., prevention goals).…”

Sense of Personal Control Intensifies Moral Judgments of Others’ Actions

“…Based on this difference, research has shown that those primed with a promotion focus are more likely to make use of feelings in decision making, and those primed with a prevention focus are more likely to make use of reasons rather than feelings in decision making (Pham and Avnet, 2004; Avnet and Higgins, 2006). Furthermore, in the domain of moral judgment specifically, those primed with a promotion focus are more likely to make use of their intuitive feelings in making moral judgments, resulting in more intense judgments compared to those primed with a prevention focus if the wrongness of those judgments depends exclusively on intuitive feelings of right and wrong (Cornwell and Higgins, 2016). It is also the case that Americans tend to be more promotion-focused than prevention-focused (Higgins, 2008); because our samples consisted of Americans, this could be an explanation for the robust nature of the effect across studies.…”

“…Additionally, if these judgments are due to in-the-moment consideration of one’s internal states when making judgments, then manipulating an individual’s willingness to consider internal cues should influence the connection between the sense of control and judgment intensity (Study 3). One subtle way to do so is via regulatory focus: Research has shown that those in a promotion state are more likely to incorporate internal intuitions into moral judgments compared to those in a prevention state (Cornwell and Higgins, 2016). This would also show that the association between sense of control and moral judgment intensity was not simply caused by beliefs about the world.…”

Stress and unethical consumer attitudes: The mediating role of construal level and materialism

“…Therefore, the need for understanding why consumers act unethically becomes critical. A growing body of research has examined a range of antecedents of attitude towards unethical behavior, such as the Big Five personality traits (Egan & Taylor, 2010); seductiveness, thriftiness, integrity (Hong, Koh, & Paunonen, 2012); religiosity (Arli & Pekerti, 2017); moral philosophy (Lu & Lu, 2009); moral disengagement (Egan, Hughes, & Palmer, 2015); and regulatory focus (Cornwell & Higgins, 2016). The findings suggest that unethical activities can be explained by different situational and individual factors (see Pan & Sparks, 2012 for a review).…”