502363
research-article2013
PSSXXX10.1177/0956797613502363Zhang et al.Prevention Focus and Repetition
Psychological Science OnlineFirst, published on November 25, 2013 as doi:10.1177/0956797613502363
Research Article
Repeating the Past: Prevention Focus
Motivates Repetition, Even for Unethical
Decisions
Psychological Science
XX(X) 1­–9
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797613502363
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Shu Zhang, James F. M. Cornwell, and E. Tory Higgins
Columbia University
Abstract
Prevention-focused individuals are motivated to maintain the status quo. Given this, we predicted that individuals
with a strong prevention focus, either as a chronic predisposition or situationally induced, would treat their initial
decision on how to behave on a first task as the status quo and would thus be motivated to repeat that decision
on a subsequent task—even for decisions that were ethically questionable. Results from five studies supported this
prediction in multiple ethical domains: whether or not to overstate performance (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), whether or
not to disclose disadvantageous facts (Study 3), and whether or not to pledge a donation (Study 4). The preventionrepetition effect was observed both when the initial and subsequent decisions were in the same domain (Studies 1–3)
and when they were in different domains (Study 4). Alternative accounts for this effect, such as justification for the
initial decision and preference for consistency, were ruled out (Study 2b).
Keywords
ethics, motivation, morality, regulatory focus, prevention focus, slippery slope
Received 6/1/13; Revision accepted 7/28/13
One of the most tenacious problems facing our society is
the frequent occurrence of repeated transgressions:
Salespersons forge one sale after another to meet financial
targets (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004); managers overstate
their firms’ earnings in growing amounts (Schrand &
Zechman, 2012); auditors escalate one questionable call
into overt violations (Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, & Bazerman,
2006); police officers fail to resist small but frequent bribes
(Ashforth & Anand, 2003). A significant portion of transgressions can be attributed to repeated violations (Clinard
& Yeager, 1980), yet little is known about repeated ethical
decision making (Pfarrer, Decelles, Smith, & Taylor, 2008).
As Darley (1992) put it, “The question is not whether or
not to commit an immoral act. It is what to do when such
an act has been committed” (p. 215).
Even studies that adopt a relational, process view of
ethical decision making yield equivocal findings on how
one decision influences another. According to a dynamic
view of the moral self, people feel entitled to act unethically after incurring “moral credits” from a good deed,
and they feel propelled to act ethically following a
misconduct that created “moral debits,” both indicating a
reverse in the ethical stance of a previous decision (Monin
& Jordan, 2009; Zhong, Ku, Lount, & Murnighan, 2010).
However, one decision can elicit more similar ones, as
evidenced by transgressions that occur along a slippery
slope, whereby a sequence of decisions follows a “gradual erosion” pattern (Ashforth & Anand, 2003; Schrand &
Zechman, 2012; Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004). These
opposite predictions thus beg the question: When will
one decision be followed by a similar one?
In the present research, we addressed this question by
focusing on the role of self-regulation in ethical decision
making. Specifically, we drew on regulatory-focus theory
as one way to explain the motivation behind repeating a
previous decision regardless of its ethicality. Regulatoryfocus theory distinguishes between two self-regulatory
Corresponding Author:
Shu Zhang, Columbia Business School, Management Division, 3022
Broadway, New York, NY 10027
E-mail: sz2225@columbia.edu
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Zhang et al.
2
orientations: a promotion focus, which is concerned with
advancement through making a change from the status
quo (“0”) to a new, better state (“+1”), and a prevention
focus, which is concerned with security through maintaining the status quo (“0”) against a worse state (“−1”;
Higgins, 1997, 1998). Hence, when at the status quo, prevention-focused individuals generally prefer conservative
maintenance strategies (Crowe & Higgins, 1997; Friedman
& Förster, 2001). For example, prevention-focused
individuals would prefer to resume a prior interrupted
task or keep currently possessed objects, whereas promotion-focused individuals would be more open to
switching to new alternatives in both cases (Liberman,
Idson, Camacho, & Higgins, 1999).
Given that maintaining the status quo is a fit strategy
for prevention-focused individuals (Higgins, 2005), we
would expect them to repeat a prior decision regardless
of its ethical value. This is because past decisions indicate
“the ways things are done,” creating a de facto rule that
is incorporated in personal standards for gauging a new
decision (Greve, Palmer, & Pozner, 2010). People are
motivated to adjust personal standards to fit a questionable past decision (Gino & Bazerman, 2009). This notion
finds support in the “self-herding” phenomenon, whereby
people refer to their past behavior for guidance in deciding what to do later (Ariely, 2009). Even as observers,
people tend to approve of the unethical behaviors of
another person that occur gradually (Gino & Bazerman,
2009). What we propose is that prevention-focused individuals will be motivated to repeat a past decision, even
if it was unethical, to maintain the status quo created by
that decision.
One might predict instead that prevention-focused
individuals would feel bad after making an initial unethical decision, such as by feeling guilty or ashamed
(Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007), which would cause
them to be cautious about repeating it in order to avoid
having these negative feelings again. However, what is
most important to prevention-focused individuals—the
essence of prevention—is to maintain the status quo
(Halvorson & Higgins, 2013; Higgins, 2012). As a behavioral tactic that fulfills this underlying motivation, repeating a prior decision creates a fit experience that feels
right, independent of the hedonic feelings associated
with the behavior being repeated (Higgins, 2005, 2012).
Indeed, research has found that the prevention-focused
concerns for repeating past behaviors trump hedonic
concerns about those behaviors. For example, prevention-focused individuals are motivated to repeat the managing behaviors of their former manager, even when they
consider those behaviors to have been unpleasant or
ineffective (Zhang, Higgins, & Chen, 2011).
In five studies, we tested the hypothesis that a chronic
or induced prevention focus predicts repeating the
ethical stance of a prior decision. Each study included
two consecutive tasks in which participants made decisions in one of three ethical domains: whether or not (a)
to overstate their own performance (Studies 1, 2a, and
2b), (b) to disclose disadvantageous facts to an interested
party (Study 3), and (c) to pledge a donation (Study 4).
In addition to testing participants’ repetition of decisions
within the same domain (Studies 1–3), we evaluated the
possibility that they would repeat the ethical stance of
their decisions across different domains, such as by initially refusing to pledge a donation and subsequently
overstating their performance (Study 4).
Study 1
In Study 1, participants completed two consecutive tasks,
each of which presented them with an opportunity to
cheat by overstating their performance for potential gain.
We predicted that only for participants with a strong
chronic prevention focus, those who cheated on the first
task would be more likely to cheat on the second task
than those who did not cheat on the first task.
Method
Eighty-seven college students (30 males, 57 females1)
participated in an experiment that consisted of two tasks:
a general-knowledge quiz (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008)
and an anagram task. For each task, participants could
win a $100 lottery if their performance ranked in the top
half of all participants. At the end of the general-knowledge quiz, participants received feedback on their performance and a slightly overstated score and were asked to
accept or reject the score (Weiss & Johar, 2012). Because
participants were aware of the overstatement, accepting
the score or entering another overstated score after rejecting this score would constitute cheating. Participants then
worked on the anagram task. When they finished, they
viewed the answer key and reported how many anagrams they had solved. To inconspicuously detect intentional cheating, we used the carbonless anagram method
(Ruedy & Schweitzer, 2011), which allowed us to compare participants’ self-reported performance with their
true performance (for more details, see Anagram Task in
the section for Studies 1, 2a, and 2b in the Supplemental
Material available online). Finally, we measured participants’ chronic prevention and promotion foci as two
separate dimensions (Higgins et al., 2001).
Results
Table 1 shows the percentages of participants who
cheated on the two tasks. Logistic regressions showed
that initial cheating on the quiz did not affect subsequent
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Prevention Focus and Repetition3
Table 1. Percentages of Participants Who Made Less-Than-Ethical Decisions
(Studies 1–4)
Decision
Study 1
Study 2a
Study 2b
Study 3
Study 4
57
31
53
30
59
32
58
84
61
43
Initial decision
Subsequent decision
Note: Less-than-ethical decisions were cheating (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), failing to disclose
information (Study 3), and initially failing to pledge a donation and subsequently cheating
(Study 4).
cheating on the anagram task,2 b = 0.56, exp(b) = 1.75,
p = .25. However, prevention focus and initial cheating
had an interactive effect on subsequent cheating, b =
1.18, exp(b) = 3.27, p = .03. Simple-slopes tests showed
that participants with a strong prevention focus were
more likely to overstate their anagram performance after
cheating on the quiz than after not cheating, t(81) = 2.27,
p = .03, whereas participants with a weak prevention
focus did not show this tendency, t(81) = −0.85, p = .40
(Fig. 1). There was no interaction between promotion
focus and initial cheating, b = 0.25, exp(b) = 1.29, p = .61.
Discussion
Study 1 revealed a prevention-repetition effect in two
rounds of ethical decision making: Individuals with a
strong prevention focus were more likely to inflate their
performance after having done so on a previous task.
Moreover, the fact that prevention focus did not directly
affect initial or subsequent cheating confirmed the notion
that this self-regulatory motive functions to maintain the
ethical stance of a previous decision regardless of its ethical value.
Honest on Quiz
Cheating on Quiz
Likelihood of Cheating
1.00
.80
*
.60
.40
.20
.00
Weak Prevention Focus
Strong Prevention Focus
Fig. 1. Likelihood of cheating on an anagram task as a function of participants’ chronic prevention focus and whether they had cheated on
an initial task (Study 1). The asterisk indicates a significant difference
between groups (*p < .05).
Studies 2a and 2b
In Studies 2a and 2b, we situationally induced regulatory
focus, which allowed us to test the causality of the prevention-repetition effect. In Study 2b, we also tested
other prevention-related mechanisms that might account
for this effect, including justification for the initial decision and preference for consistency.
Study 2a
Method. Eighty college students (28 males, 52 females)
participated in an experiment. The tasks and procedures
in this study were identical to those in Study 1 except
that instead of measuring chronic regulatory focus, we
experimentally induced it using incidental cues and message framing. Participants first drew an escape pathway
for a cartoon mouse trapped inside a maze. An owl or a
piece of Swiss cheese appeared in the maze, serving as
an incidental cue that could activate a prevention or a
promotion focus, respectively (Friedman & Förster,
2001). Then, at the beginning of both the general-knowledge quiz and the anagram task, the same regulatory
focus was induced through message framing (Shah, Higgins, & Friedman, 1998). The prevention-focus message
emphasized relative losses by telling participants that
they were currently in a $100 lottery for each task but
would be removed from the lottery if their performance
ranked in the bottom half of all participants. The promotion-focus message emphasized relative gains by telling
participants that they would be entered in a $100 lottery
for each task if their performance ranked in the top half
of all participants.
Results. Manipulation checks showed that more participants in the prevention condition than in the promotion
condition reported seeing a mouse hiding from an owl,
χ2(1, N = 80) = 80.00, p < .001, and trying to remain in the
lottery, χ2(1, N = 80) = 22.25, p < .001. Table 1 shows the
percentages of participants who cheated on the two
tasks. Logistic regressions yielded no effect of initial
cheating on subsequent cheating, b = 0.34, exp(b) = 1.40,
p = .49. As expected, induced regulatory focus and initial
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Zhang et al.
4
cheating had an interactive effect on subsequent cheating, b = −2.26, exp(|b|) = 9.60, p = .04. Participants with
an induced prevention focus were more likely to overstate their anagram performance after cheating on the
initial quiz than after not cheating, b = 1.64, exp(b) =
5.14, p = .06, whereas participants with an induced promotion focus did not exhibit this tendency, b = −0.62,
exp(|b|) = 1.87, p = .37 (Fig. 2).
Study 2b
In Study 2b, we investigated two alternative accounts for
the prevention-repetition effect. First, repeating a prior
decision may function to justify the decision (Beauvois,
Joule, & Brunetti, 1993), given that switching to a new
decision constitutes an admission that the prior decision
was problematic, which would be more threatening to
prevention-focused individuals, who do not want to
make mistakes. If this were true, justification of a prior
decision should eliminate the motivation to repeat that
decision. According to another account, repetition is
driven by preference for consistency, and this need may
be stronger among prevention-focused individuals, given
their stronger self-evaluative motive for self-certainty
(Leonardelli, Lakin, & Arkin, 2007). If this were true, controlling preference for consistency should eliminate the
prevention-repetition effect.
Percentage of Participants Cheating
Method. Participants were 63 college students (23 males,
40 females). The tasks and procedures in this study
were identical to those used in Study 2a except for two
100
80
Promotion Focus: Honest on Quiz
Promotion Focus: Cheating on Quiz
Prevention Focus: Honest on Quiz
Prevention Focus: Cheating on Quiz
*
*
60
differences. First, after accepting or rejecting the overstated score for the quiz but before starting the anagram
task, participants indicated whether they noticed any
error in the score by choosing from a list of statements
(Table 2) or writing down an open-ended response. Second, we measured participants’ preference for consistency (Cialdini, Trost, & Newsom, 1995).
Results. Again, more participants in the prevention condition than in the promotion condition reported seeing a
mouse hiding from an owl, χ2(1, N = 63) = 63.00, p <
.001, and trying to remain in the lottery, χ2(1, N = 63) =
17.80, p < .001. As Table 2 shows, all participants justified
their accepting or rejecting the overstated quiz score.
Table 1 shows the percentages of participants who
cheated on the two tasks. Logistic regressions yielded no
effect of preference for consistency on initial cheating,
b = 0.35, exp(b) = 1.42, p = .48, or subsequent cheating,
b = −0.14, exp(|b|) = 1.15, p = .79. Initial and subsequent
cheating were positively related, b = 1.43, exp(b) = 4.19,
p = .02, and this relation was driven by the preventionfocus condition. Controlling for preference for consistency, initial cheating predicted subsequent cheating only
for participants with an induced prevention focus, b =
2.17, exp(b) = 8.74, p = .03, not for participants with an
induced promotion focus, b = 0.90, exp(b) = 2.46, p = .33
(Fig. 2). Importantly, preference for consistency did not
predict repeating the first decision in the second task,
b = −0.22, exp(|b|) = 1.25, p = .86.
Discussion. Through an experimental induction of regulatory focus, Studies 2a and 2b supported the hypothesized causal effect of prevention focus on repeating a
prior decision. Further, Study 2b showed that the prevention-repetition effect still held when participants justified
their initial decision before repeating that decision, which
rules out the possibility that repetition was driven simply
by the need for justification. Preference for consistency
was also ruled out as an alternative explanation for the
effect. Thus, these results provided additional support for
the notion that maintaining the status quo created by a
prior decision is the motivation behind repetition.
40
Study 3
20
0
No Justification (Study 2a)
Justification (Study 2b)
Fig. 2. Percentage of participants who cheated on the anagram task
as a function of induced regulatory focus and whether participants
cheated or did not cheat on an initial task. Results are shown separately
for Study 2a, in which participants did not justify their initial decision,
and Study 2b, in which they did. Asterisks indicate significant differences between groups (*p < .05).
Study 3 aimed to generalize the prevention-repetition
effect in an interactive context of two-party negotiations
in which one party could deceive the other by willfully
failing to disclose relevant factual information (Kern &
Chugh, 2009; Steinel, Utz, & Koning, 2010). Although failing to disclose information is perceived as being less
negative than lying outright, it becomes unethical when
it can “adversely affect the receiver, who would act very
differently if he or she knew the truth being concealed”
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Prevention Focus and Repetition5
Table 2. Justification Statements for the Initial Decision (Study 2b)
Response
Number of participants
Inflated score rejected
I noticed some error, so I rejected the wrong score and put in a
score that I thought was correct.
I didn’t notice any error and found the computer-calculated
scores to be reliable
Other
30a
0
0
Inflated score accepted
I didn’t notice any error, but I could be wrong, as I may have
missed it.
I didn’t notice any error and found the computer-calculated
scores to be reliable.
I noticed some error but may have accepted a wrong score by
accident.
I wasn’t aware that the data collection is new and may have
errors, so I assumed that the computer-calculated scores were
reliable.
Other
14
9b
5
4
1c
Note: Responses were to the following item: “To help us improve the new data collection system,
we’d appreciate your feedback on the computer-calculated scores. Did you notice any error in the
computer-calculated scores?” All participants received a (fictitious) score of 56; the inflated score was
65. (For more details, see General Knowledge Quiz in the section for Studies 1, 2a, and 2b in the
Supplemental Material.)
a
Of the 30 participants who rejected the inflated score, 26 later entered the correct score, and 4
entered another inflated score (58, 68, 80, and 80, respectively). bThe 9 participants who reported not
having noticed the error might have been telling the truth and thus might not have been cheating.
However, even when these participants were excluded from the analyses, the relation between initial
and subsequent cheating remained significant for participants with an induced prevention focus,
b = 2.91, exp(b) = 18.41, p = .02, and the relation remained nonsignificant for participants with an induced promotion focus, b = 1.17, exp(b) = 3.21, p = .21. cThe open-ended response of the participant
who chose “Other” was “I couldn’t notice any error, as I had no outside confirmation of how many
and which questions I answered incorrectly.”
(Fleming & Zyglidopoulos, 2008, p. 839). This was the
case for the decisions examined in this study, in which
participants who had proprietary information could benefit from not disclosing it to another party who could act
differently if given the information.
Method
Eighty-six college students (30 males, 56 females) participated in a study on negotiation strategies. Paired into 43
dyads, they were randomly assigned to a buyer role or a
seller role and played the same role in two rounds of
negotiation. The first round was a negotiation over the
sale of a used car, and the buyer had the incentive to not
disclose the intended use of the car because it could raise
the seller’s asking price. The second round was a negotiation over the sale of a real-estate property (Karp, Gold,
& Tan, 1998), and the buyer had the incentive to not
disclose the intended use of the property because it
could break the deal. (For more details, see the section
for Study 3 in the Supplemental Material.)
Buyers were further randomly assigned to have a prevention or a promotion focus, which we induced with
incentive messages similar to those used in Studies 2a
and 2b. The prevention-focus message for each round of
negotiation emphasized relative losses by telling buyers
that they were currently in a $100 lottery but would be
removed from this lottery if their purchase price was
above the average for all buyers; if no deal was reached,
the chance of their being removed from the lottery was
50%. The promotion-focus message emphasized relative
gains by telling buyers that they would be entered in a
$100 lottery if their purchase price was below the average for all buyers; if no deal was reached, the chance of
their being entered in the lottery was 50%.
Results
Manipulation checks showed that more preventionfocused buyers than promotion-focused buyers tried to
remain in the lottery, χ2(1, N = 43) = 13.47, p < .001. Two
research assistants independently coded sellers’ reports
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Zhang et al.
6
of what buyers said about their intentions in each round
of negotiation (0 = disclosure, 1 = failure to disclose).
Their codings converged for 39 (91%) and 42 dyads
(98%) for the first and second rounds, respectively, and
the remaining discrepancies were thoroughly discussed
before a final consensus was reached.3
All dyads reached an agreement in the first round, and
34 dyads (79%) reached an agreement in the second
round. Table 1 shows the percentages of participants
who failed to disclose information in each round. The
higher failure-to-disclose rate in the second round could
be because buyers knew they could not fulfill the goal of
buying the property if they disclosed true intentions.
Chi-square tests yielded a positive relation between
initial and subsequent failures to disclose, χ2(1, N = 43) =
6.61, p = .01, φ = .39, which was moderated by induced
regulatory focus, χ2(1, N = 43) = 13.27, p < .001, φ = .56.
For buyers with an induced prevention focus, those who
had not disclosed information in the first round were less
likely to disclose information in the second round than
those who had disclosed information in the first round,
χ2(1, N = 22) = 9.35, p = .002, φ = .65, whereas buyers
with an induced promotion focus did not show this tendency, χ2(1, N = 21) = 0.05, p = .83 (Fig. 3).
Discussion
Study 3 generalized the prevention-repetition effect to a
social setting in which the outcomes of participants’ decisions impacted another person and not just the participants themselves. In Study 3, we induced regulatory
focus solely through message framing rather than by
using message framing following a maze-cue manipulation as in Studies 2a and 2b. This means that the prevention-repetition effect found in these studies did not
depend on the maze-cue manipulation, which might
have also manipulated approach-avoidance motivations
(Förster, Friedman, Özelsel, & Denzler, 2006).
As a long-standing issue, failure to disclose information characterizes problems in many fields, including
financial, medical, legal, and environmental services.
Although we measured failure to disclose as a negotiation-specific behavior, our findings may speak to a variety of forms of misconduct, from passive nondisclosure
to fraudulent concealment.
Study 4
The four previous studies examined repeated decisions
in the same ethical domain, such as overstating performance (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b) and failing to disclose
information (Study 3). In Study 4, we considered whether
the prevention-repetition effect might generalize even
further by testing the role of prevention focus in repeating the ethical stance of a previous decision, instead of
repeating the decision itself, from one domain (pledging
a donation) to another (overstating one’s performance).
Method
Fifty-six individuals (22 males, 34 females) from the
Amazon Mechanical Turk completed an online study of
motivation and performance. Participants were first introduced to a donation opportunity as an attempt to increase
social responsibility (Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009).
They could select from a list of six donation recipients or
specify any outside recipient and indicate the amount of
money that they wished to donate. They then completed
the same general-knowledge quiz used in Study 1. As in
Study 1, we measured participants’ chronic prevention
and promotion foci as two separate dimensions.
Results
Percentage of Buyers Failing to
Disclose in Second Negotiation
Disclosure in First Negotiation
Failure to Disclose in First Negotiation
**
100
80
60
40
20
0
Promotion Focus
Prevention Focus
Fig. 3. Percentage of participants who failed to disclose information
as a function of induced regulatory focus and previous disclosure or
failure to disclose (Study 3). Asterisks indicate a significant difference
between groups (**p < .01).
Table 1 shows the percentages of participants who
refused to donate and who later cheated on the quiz.
Logistic regressions yielded a marginally significant effect
of donation on cheating, b = −1.10, exp(|b|) = 3.00, p =
.06, which suggests that the less prosocial decision of
refusing to donate increased the likelihood of cheating
later. More importantly, this effect was driven by an interaction between prevention focus and donation, b = −2.66,
exp(|b|) = 14.24, p = .02. Simple-slopes tests showed
that for participants with a strong prevention focus, those
who had previously decided not to donate were more
likely to cheat than those who had previously decided to
donate, t(50) = −3.32, p = .002, whereas participants with
a weak prevention focus did not show this tendency,
t(50) = 0.09, p = .93 (Fig. 4). The interaction between
promotion focus and initial cheating was nonsignificant,
b = −1.16, exp(|b|) = 3.18, p = .27.
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Prevention Focus and Repetition7
Donation
No Donation
Likelihood of Cheating
1.00
**
.80
.60
.40
.20
.00
Weak Prevention Focus
Strong Prevention Focus
Fig. 4. Likelihood of subsequent cheating as a function of participants’
chronic prevention focus and initial decision about whether to pledge
a donation (Study 4). Asterisks indicate a significant difference between
groups (**p < .01).
Discussion
Tested across different domains of ethical decision making, the notion that the ethical stance of a prior decision
would be repeated in a subsequent decision was supported for individuals with a strong prevention focus.
Extending previous studies, Study 4 showed that the prevention-repetition effect is not constrained by the domain
of a status quo decision. Instead, the broad, cross-domain
relevance of this effect corroborates with the notion that
“people cognitively categorize fairly disparate activities
(e.g., helping and cheating) within a single moral rubric”
( Jordan, Mullen, & Murnighan, 2011, p. 710).
General Discussion
Results from five studies led to the novel finding that having a chronic or induced prevention focus predicts
repeating the ethical stance of a prior decision. The prevention-repetition effect emerged for decisions in multiple ethical domains (overstating one’s performance,
failing to disclose information, and failing to pledge a
donation) whether the initial and subsequent decisions
were in the same or different domains. The possibilities
that this effect was due to prevention-focused individuals’ need to justify their initial decision or to their desire
for consistency were ruled out (Study 2b).
There was no effect of prevention focus on generally
being ethical or unethical, either in the initial or the subsequent decision.4 Rather, the prevention effect was on
repeating the second time what was done the first time,
regardless of its ethical value. Although a prevention
focus can lead to more bad feelings about “a sin of commission,” such as overstating performance, than about “a
sin of omission,” such as failing to disclose information
(Camacho, Higgins, & Luger, 2003), the prevention-repetition effect was found for both types of “sins,” as well as
for honest decisions, which reflects the motivational
strength of fit over hedonic and ethical concerns.
This research complements the traditional view of ethical decision making as consisting of isolated events by
providing one explanation for why repeated unethical
decisions occur. Notably, a prevention focus can perpetuate unethical decisions, but it can also sustain ethical
decisions. What matters is where decision makers initially
stand. Bearing a resemblance to “arbitrary coherence”
(Ariely, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2003), a prevention focus
itself does not dictate the direction individuals arbitrarily
take at each ethical crossroad; rather, it serves as a motivator that generates coherent repeated decisions. The
path-dependent property of this effect reveals that, in the
domain of ethics, maintaining the status quo represents
an essential contribution to repeated ethical decision
making when individuals are prevention focused.
Our findings delineate a sequential process of ethical
degradation related to prevention motivation. Previously
proposed process models have described the temporal
development of unethical behaviors, such as routinization (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004), normalization (Greve
et al., 2010), moral seduction (Moore et al., 2006), and
gradual erosion (Gino & Bazerman, 2009), and the present research complements these models by adding a
regulatory-focus motivational element. It is telling, for
example, that despite a prevention focus per se having
no effect on a single decision, it increased participants’
likelihood of repeating the ethical stance of a previous
decision.
The findings draw attention to the downsides of negative reward systems that penalize transgressors through
punishment. Although anticipating punishment can function as a deterrent, research has found mixed effects of
punishment (Ariely et al., 2003). From a regulatory-focus
perspective, punishment induces prevention concerns
(Higgins, 1996) and, paradoxically, may encourage the
repetition of past wrongs, especially when maintaining
the status quo is a deeper motivation than hedonic concerns (Higgins, 2005, 2012). One way to alleviate this
downside of punishment is to “reset” the status quo by
supporting former transgressors in taking new and positive actions to safely reverse previous misconducts and
reestablish an ethical status quo.
The prevention-repetition effect can result in bliss or
woe, and future work is needed to uncover ways to harvest its benefits and minimize its costs. In our studies,
participants received no explicit feedback on their initial
decision, which might have supported their using that
decision to create the status quo. Because the definition
of what is ethical or not is often constructed in relative
terms, a social-control agent can play an important role
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Zhang et al.
8
in one’s judgment of whether a decision transgresses the
line separating right from wrong (Greve et al., 2010).
Hence, feedback that reflects negatively on an initial
unethical decision without evoking physical or psychological threats (e.g., by presenting an ethical exemplar)
could prevent people from creating the status quo from
that decision and subsequently repeating it.
Author Contributions
S. Zhang and E. T. Higgins developed the study concept. All
authors contributed to the study design. Testing and data collection were performed by S. Zhang and J. F. M. Cornwell. S.
Zhang and J. F. M. Cornwell analyzed and interpreted the data
under the supervision of E. T. Higgins. S. Zhang drafted the
manuscript, and J. F. M. Cornwell and E. T. Higgins provided
critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the
manuscript for submission.
Acknowledgments
We thank Dolly Chugh, Baruch Eitam, Michael W. Morris,
Krishna Savani, Elke Weber, and Batia Wiesenfeld for their
comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript, and Emma
Chaves, Boyoon Choi, and Julia Lushing for their assistance
with data collection and coding.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding
This work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health
Grant 39429 awarded to E. T. Higgins.
Supplemental Material
Additional supporting information may be found at http://pss
.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data
Notes
1. There was no effect of gender in Studies 1 through 4.
2. Regulatory focus had no main effect on initial or subsequent
decisions in Studies 1 through 4.
3. Buyers also reported whether they had disclosed their true
intentions in each round of negotiation. These self-report measures yielded results consistent with the coded measures.
4. Unlike Gino and Margolis’s study (2011), we found no main
effect of regulatory focus on initial cheating in Studies 1, 2a,
and 2b. Our version of overstating performance was a less
active and more ambiguous form of cheating than that used
by Gino and Margolis (2011), making cheating less threatening
to prevention-focused individuals, which could account for the
difference. We also found no main effect of regulatory focus on
subsequent cheating, but subsequent cheating was influenced
by initial cheating for prevention-focused individuals. There
was no main effect of regulatory focus in Studies 3 and 4, in
which decisions were measured in ethical domains different
from the domain studied by Gino and Margolis (2011).
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