Regulatory focus and message framing: A test of three accounts

摘要

A review of previous literature shows that thereare at least three ways in which regulatory focus may berelated to message framing. Specifically, persuasion mightbe enhanced when there is a match between a person'sregulatory focus and (a) the outcome focus of the message(i.e., gain vs. loss anchor); (b) the overall valence of themessage (i.e., positive vs. negative valence); and (c) thetype of benefit or harm emphasized (i.e., achievement vs.security). In an effort to explicitly compare and contrastthese three possibilities, and to determine whether theresults depend on the way regulatory focus is measured, weused a 2 (outcome focus) by 2 (overall valence) by 2 (typeof benefit or harm emphasized) within-subjects factorialdesign and three commonly employed measures of regu-latory focus to test the three accounts. The findings weremost consistent with the hypothesis that the perceivedpersuasiveness of a message is increased when there is amatch between a person's chronic regulatory focus and theoverall valence of the message.