Adjust The Impact Of Orientation On Risk Decision-making In Different Genders

People will make efforts to control and regulate their thoughts and behavior when the try to fulfil a task or pursue a goal. In this self regulatory process, people will regulate their behavior in a certain way, which is named as regulatory focus. Based on the Self-regulation Theory, Regulatory Focus Theory puts emphasis on the process of approach-avoidance motivation, which has moved beyond the hedonic principle. Developed from the Regulatory Focus Theory, Regulatory Fit Theory points the view that people experience a regulatory fit, which is independent from the value of outcomes, when they use goal pursuit means that fits their regulatory orientations, and this regulatory fit increases the value of what they are doing and influences their decision making. These two highly correlated theory provide a new perspective in studying and interpreting motivation. People have to make numbers of decisions in their daily life and lots of them are risky. But different people make different decisions because of their traits and situations. This study employed both questionnaire and behavioral experiments to explore the differences in risky decision making with different gender and regulatory focus, as well as fit effects among those factors. The research includes three experiments:Experiment 1 used risky decision making questionnaire, employed 2(gender:male vs. female)* 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus vs. prevention focus)*2(framing:gain vs. loss) between-subjects design to explore the difference in risky decision making with objective probability. The result turns out to be that gender and regulatory focus has a significant interaction:men are influenced more by their chronic regulatory focus, that is, men with promotion-focus have higher risk score than those prevention-focus, whereas women are influenced more by framing, showing the classical framing effects.In experiment 2, participants were asked to identify different types of words as fast as possible. Experiment 2 employed 2(word type:promotion-related words vs. prevention-related words)*2(gender:male vs. female)*2(regulatory focus:promotion focus vs. prevention focus) mixed design to explore the differences in information process and behavioral strategy with different gender and regulatory focus. The result shows that promotion-focus individuals have shorter reaction time in identifying promotion-re la ted words and longer reaction time in identifying prevention-related words, especially in male participants. However, prevention-focus individuals show little difference in reaction time when identify different type of words. What's more, concerning the reaction time of whole task, promotion-focus individual is significantly faster than prevention-focus.Experiment 3 used Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), employed 2(gender:male vs. female)* 2(regulatory focus:promotion focus vs. prevention focus)*2(framing:gain vs. loss) between-subjects design to explore the difference in risky decision making with subjective probability. The result turns out to be that the subjective probability of women in BART is higher than men and the number of exploded balloon of promotion-focus individuals is more than the prevention-focus.In addition, combine the results of experiment 1 and experiment 3, we can conclude that there will be a regulatory fit when strategy sustains the chronic regulatory focus, bringing value from fit, which means the more risk-seeking behaviors.Finally, combine all three experiments and their correlation, this study concluded the influences and interactions in risk decision making made by regulatory focus and other factors. We pointed out the limitation and future direction of this study and summed up the conclusion at the last.