Regulatory Fit Effects In Decision Making

Decision making is a hot research topic in managerial psychology and organizational behavior fields. Past studies on decision making mostly were base on cognition, emotion, personality perspectives. However, little research explored decision making from motivation perspective. Therefore, from motivation perspective, this article tried to apply two important related motivation theories----regulatory focus theory and regulatory fit theory to decision making field, took undergraduate students and employees as subjects, used experiment methods, asked them to completed decision preference, multi-attribute decision, and forgiving decision tasks, and to examined regulatory focus effects and its influencing factors in decision making, regulatory fits effects and its psychological mechanism in decision making, and factors those which influenced regulatory fits effects.Study 1 took undergraduate student as samples, asked them to completed decision preference task, and used questionnaire to manipulate regulatory focus to investigate regulatory focus effects and its influencing factors. This study included three experiments. Experiment 1 employed single factor (regulatory focus:promotion focus/prevention focus) between-subject design to examine the effect regulatory focus on decision preference; Experiment 2 employed 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus/prevention focus)×2(decision conflict:high/low) between-subject design to examine the effect regulatory focus and decision conflict on decision preference; Experiment 3 employed 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus/prevention focus)×2(defer risk:high/low) between-subject design to examine the effect regulatory focus and defer risk on decision preference. Results showed that, Regulatory focus influenced decision preference, such that promotion-focused individuals were more likely to prefer selection decision, prevention-focused individuals were more likely to prefer deferral decision; decision conflict moderated the influence of regulatory focus on decision preference, such that when faced high decision conflict, promotion-focused individuals were more likely to prefer selection decision, prevention-focused individuals were more likely to prefer deferral decision, however, when faced low decision conflict, both of them had no significant differences on decision preference, prefer selection decision; defer risk moderated the influence of regulatory focus on decision preference, such that when faced high defer risk, promotion-focused individuals were more likely to prefer selection decision, prevention-focused individuals were more likely to prefer deferral decision, however, when faced low defer risk, both of them had no significant differences on decision preference, prefer deferral decision.Study 2 took undergraduate student as samples, asked them to completed multi-attribute decision task, and used priming task to manipulate regulatory focus to investigate regulatory fit effects and its mechanism. This study included two experiments. Experiment 4 employed 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus/prevention focus) X 2(information search pattern:based on attribute/based on alternative) between-subject design to explore fit effects between regulatory focus and informational search pattern; Experiment 5 employed 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus/prevention focus) X 2(decision strategy:intuitive/deliberate) between-subject design to explore fit effects between regulatory focus and decision strategy. Results showed that participants of promotion-focused priming were more likely to prefer based on attribute search pattern, participants of prevention-focused priming were more likely to prefer based on alternative search pattern. Moreover, there were fit effects between regulatory focus and informational search pattern, compared to nonfit, participants in fit condition were more likely to give more favorable evaluation to chosen alternative. Preliminary analysis demonstrated that processing fluency could partly explain this fit effects; participants of promotion-focused priming were more likely to prefer intuitive strategy, participants of prevention-focused priming were more likely to prefer deliberate strategy. Moreover, there were fit effects between regulatory focus and decision strategy, compared to nonfit, participants in fit condition were more likely to give more favorable evaluation to chosen alternative. Further analysis demonstrated that feeling right was the mechanism of fit effects.Study 3 took employees as samples, asked them to completed forgiving decision task, and used priming task to manipulate regulatory fit to investigate the influencing factors of regulatory fit effects. This study included three experiments. Experiment 6 employed single factor (regulatory fit:fit/nonfit) between-subject design to examine the effect of regulatory fit/nonfit on interpersonal forgiveness decisions and its mechanism; Experiment 7 employed 2(regulatory fit:fit/nonfit) X 2(severity of transgression:mild/severe) between-subject design to explore the effect of severity of transgression on fit effects; Experiment 8 employed 2(regulatory fit:fit/nonfit) X 2(type of attribution:right/wrong) between-subject design to explore the effect of style of attribution on fit effects. Results showed that regulatory fit/nonfit influenced participants'forgiveness such that they were more forgiving in conditions of fit than nonfit, and feelings of right/wrongness were found to mediate this effect; Regulatory fit/nonfit influenced forgiveness in opposite ways for mild and severe transgression. For participants who experienced the mild transgression, regulatory fit/nonfit influenced forgiveness in the same way as experiment 6, however, for participants who experienced the severe transgression, regulatory fit/nonfit influenced forgiveness in the opposite way; Experiment 8 demonstrated that the effect of regulatory fit on forgiveness was a direct result of participants misattributing their feeling right experience onto their forgiveness decisions.At last part of the dissertation, we summed up the conclusion, pointed out the originality, limitations and future directions of this research.