The Impact Of Regulatory Focus And Message Framing On Persuasion

This current research is based on the regulatory focus theory (Higgins,1997,1998) and regulatory fit theory (Higgins,2000,2005), try to examine the impact of chronic regulatory focus and situationally primed regulatory focus on the persuasive effects of different types of message. There are four types of message used in the research:completely eager-framed message, completely vigilant-framed message, eager-vigilant-framed message, vigilant-eager-framed message. This resulted in four different kinds of regulatory fit for each kind of individuals:pure fit, pure nonfit, first fit then nonfit, first nonfit then fit.Our research includes two experiments, in experiment 1 the chronic regulatory focus of participants was measured. We applied a 2 (regulatory focus:promotion, prevention)×4 (message framing:completely eager-framed, completely vigilant-framed, eager-vigilant-framed, vigilant-eager-framed) between-subject design.All participants were asked to complete the regulatory focus questionnaire (RFQ) that measures their chronic regulatory orientation. Participants were categorized as promotion or prevention focused based on the regulatory focus score. After completing the RFQ, participants were presented with a message. After reading the message, participants reported their attitude toward the message, the perceived persuasiveness of the message arguments and the extent of their elaboration.In experiment 2, a promotion or prevention focus was experimentally primed. Basically, the results of two experiments were the same, namely, message led to more positive attitude when people experienced pure regulatory fit (vs pure nonfit), resulted in a significant regulatory focus×message framing interaction. And when participants experienced fit and nonfit within a message, information presentation sequence matters a lot, attitude was more positive when people first experienced nonfit and then experienced fit.The research presented in this article not only provide convergent support for extant literature, also first investigate people's attitude toward the message when the valence is the same, but the experience within a message contains fit and nonfit at the same time. The mechanisms underlying these effects are also discussed.