Promotion focus evolves from the tendency to regulate one’s thoughts and behaviour in relation to one’s hopes, wishes or aspirations. Thus, this tendency increases one’s tendency to pay attention to things that are construed as approaching (or moving away from) inherently positive end-states, such as fitness, high performance and excitement.
Prevention focus evolves from the tendency to regulate one’s thoughts and behaviour in relation to one’s duties, responsibilities. Thus, this tendency increases one’s tendency to pay attention to things that are construed as getting close to (or moving away from) inherently negative end-states, such as disease, failure and distress.
Thus, promotion focus and prevention focus are considered two different ways of approach motivation: Some may respond more positively to interventions intended to increase one’s heart fitness, while others to interventions intended to decrease one’s heart disease.
Four alternative message frames: Which works better?
This led us to consider four alternative ways of constructing advertising or public service messages.
We predicted and found that the gain message frame versus the non-loss frame led to the anticipation of stronger positive feelings and greater likelihood of compliance when consumers’ promotion focus was elicited in the situation (via a simple contextual cue). In contrast, the opposite was found when consumers’ prevention focus was elicited in the situation. This is interesting especially because both the gain and non-loss messages were positive in the overall tone of the message and equivalent in content (say, you may obtain heart disease by subscribing this service versus you may avoid heart disease by doing the same!)
We later found the evidence that when the all the four message frames (i.e., gain, non-loss, loss, non-gain) are compared, the compatibility between consumers’ regulatory focus and the valence of the message drives (not the end state) drives the likelihood of persuasion or compliance. In other words, positively-valenced message frame (i.e., gain and non-loss) are more influential for people with promotion-focus compared with negatively-valenced message (i.e., loss and non-gains). This finding did not render support to the regulatory focus theory’s prediction that it is the end-state, not the valence, of the message frame that determines the compatibility with people’s regulatory focus.
Yi, S., & Baumgartner, H. (2008). Motivational compatibility and the role of anticipated feelings in positively valenced persuasive message framing. Psychology & Marketing, 25(11), 1007–1026. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20250
Yi, S., & Baumgartner, H. (2009). Regulatory focus and message framing: A test of three accounts. Motivation and Emotion, 33(4), 435–443. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-009-9148-y