Decision-Making – Mental Health Matters

An Overview of Status Quo Bias

Published on 01/13/2025 by Andrew Marshall2 Comments

Introduction

A status quo bias or default bias is a cognitive bias which results from a preference for the maintenance of one’s existing state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss or gain. Corresponding to different alternatives, this current baseline or default option is perceived and evaluated by individuals as a positive.

Status quo bias should be distinguished from a rational preference for the status quo, as when the current state of affairs is objectively superior to the available alternatives, or when imperfect information is a significant problem. A large body of evidence, however, shows that status quo bias frequently affects human decision-making. Status quo bias should also be distinguished from psychological inertia, which refers to a lack of intervention in the current course of affairs.

The bias intersects with other non-rational cognitive processes such as loss aversion, in which losses comparative to gains are weighed to a greater extent. Further non-rational cognitive processes include existence bias, endowment effect, longevity, mere exposure, and regret avoidance. Experimental evidence for the detection of status quo bias is seen through the use of the reversal test. A vast amount of experimental and field examples exist. Behaviour in regard to economics, retirement plans, health, and ethical choices show evidence of the status quo bias.

Examples

Status quo experiments have been conducted over many fields with Kahneman, Thaler, and Knetsch (1991) creating experiments on the endowment effect, loss aversion and status quo bias. Experiments have also been conducted on the effect of status quo bias on contributions to retirement plans and Fevrier & Gay (2004) study on status quo bias in organ donations consent.

Type	Outline
Questionnaire	1. Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988) demonstrated status quo bias using a questionnaire in which subjects faced a series of decision problems, which were alternately framed to be with and without a pre-existing status quo position. 2. Subjects tended to remain with the status quo when such a position was offered to them. 3. Results of the experiment further show that status quo bias advantage relatively increases with the number of alternatives given within the choice set. 4. Furthermore, a weaker bias resulted from when the individual exhibited a strong discernible preference for a chosen alternative.
Hypothetical Choice Tasks	1. Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988) gave subjects a hypothetical choice task in the following “neutral” version, in which no status quo was defined: “You are a serious reader of the financial pages but until recently you have had few funds to invest. 2. That is when you inherited a large sum of money from your great-uncle. 3. You are considering different portfolios. 4. Your choices are to invest in: a moderate-risk company, a high-risk company, treasury bills, municipal bonds.” 5. Other subjects were presented with the same problem but with one of the options designated as the status quo. 6. In this case, the opening passage continued: “A significant portion of this portfolio is invested in a moderate risk company … (The tax and broker commission consequences of any changes are insignificant.)” 7. The result was that an alternative became much more popular when it was designated as the status quo.
Electric Power Consumers	1. California electric power consumers were asked about their preferences regarding trade-offs between service reliability and rates. 2. The respondents fell into two groups, one with much more reliable service than the other. 3. Each group was asked to state a preference among six combinations of reliability and rates, with one of the combinations designated as the status quo. 4. A strong bias to the status quo was observed. 5. Of those in the high-reliability group, 60.2% chose the status quo, whereas a mere 5.7% chose the low-reliability option that the other group had been experiencing, despite its lower rates. 6. Similarly, of those in the low reliability group, 58.3 chose their low-reliability status quo, and only 5.8 chose the high-reliability option.
Automotive Insurance Consumers	1. The US states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania inadvertently ran a real-life experiment providing evidence of status quo bias in the early 1990s. 2. As part of tort law reform programs, citizens were offered two options for their automotive insurance: an expensive option giving them full right to sue and a less expensive option with restricted rights to sue. 3. In New Jersey the cheaper insurance was the default and in Pennsylvania the expensive insurance was the default. 4. Johnson, Hershey, Meszaros and Kunreuther (1993) conducted a questionnaire to test whether consumers will stay with the default option for car insurance. 5. They found that only 20% of New Jersey drivers changed from the default option and got the more expensive option. 6. Also, only 25% of Pennsylvanian drivers changed from the default option and got the cheaper insurance. 7.Therefore, framing and status quo bias can have significant financial consequences.
General Practitioners	1. Boonen, Donkers and Schut created two discrete choice experiments for Dutch residents to conclude a consumer’s preference for general practitioners and whether they would leave their current practitioner. 2. The Dutch health care system was chosen as general practitioners play the role of a gatekeeper. 3. The experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of status quo bias on a consumer’s decision to leave their current practitioner, with knowledge of other practitioners and their current relationship with their practitioner determining the role status quo bias plays. 4. Continued below.

Through the questionnaire it was shown that respondents were aware of the lack of added benefit aligned with their current general practitioner and were aware of the quality differences between potential practitioners. 35% of respondents were willing to a pay a co-payment to stay with their current general practitioner, while only 30% were willing to switch to another practitioner in exchange for a financial gain. These consumers were willing to pay a considerable amount to continue going to their current practitioner up to €17.32. For general practitioners the value assigned by the consumer to staying with their current one exceeded the total value assigned to all other attributes tested such as discounts or a certificate of quality.

Within the discrete choice experiment the respondents were offered a choice between their current practitioner and a hypothetical provider with identical attributes. The respondents were 40% more likely to choose their current practitioner than if both options were hypothetical providers, which would result in the probability being 50% for both. It was found that status quo bias had a massive impact on which general practitioner the respondents would choose. Despite consumers being offered positive financial incentives, qualitative incentives or the addition of negative financial incentives respondents were still extremely hesitant to switch from their current practitioner. The impact of status quo bias was determined as making attempts to channel consumers away from the general practitioner they are currently seeing a daunting task.

Explanations

Status quo bias has been attributed to a combination of loss aversion and the endowment effect, two ideas relevant to prospect theory. An individual weighs the potential losses of switching from the status quo more heavily than the potential gains; this is due to the prospect theory value function being steeper in the loss domain. As a result, the individual will prefer not to switch at all. In other words, we tend to oppose change unless the benefits outweigh the risks. However, the status quo bias is maintained even in the absence of gain/loss framing: for example, when subjects were asked to choose the colour of their new car, they tended towards one colour arbitrarily framed as the status quo. Loss aversion, therefore, cannot wholly explain the status quo bias, with other potential causes including regret avoidance, transaction costs and psychological commitment.

Rational Routes to Status Quo Maintenance

A status quo bias can also be a rational route if there are cognitive or informational limitations.

Informational Limitations

Decision outcomes are rarely certain, nor is the utility they may bring. Because some errors are more costly than others (Haselton & Nettle, 2006), sticking with what worked in the past is a safe option, as long as previous decisions are “good enough”.

Cognitive Limitations

Cognitive limitations of status quo bias involve the cognitive cost of choice, in which decisions are more susceptible to postponement as increased alternatives are added to the choice set. Moreover, mental effort needed to maintain status quo alternatives would often be lesser and easier, resulting in a superior choice’s benefit being outweighed by decision-making cognitive costs. Consequently, maintenance of current or previous state of affairs would be regarded as the easier alternative.

Irrational Routes

The irrational maintenance of the status quo bias links and confounds many cognitive biases.

Existence Bias

An assumption of longevity and goodness are part of the status quo bias. People treat existence as a prima facie case for goodness, aesthetic and longevity increases this preference. The status quo bias affects people’s preferences; people report preferences for what they are likely rather than unlikely to receive. People simply assume, with little reason or deliberation, the goodness of existing states.

Longevity is a corollary of the existence bias: if existence is good, longer existence should be better. This thinking resembles quasi-evolutionary notions of “survival of the fittest”, and also the augmentation principle in attribution theory.

Psychological inertia is another reason used to explain a bias towards the status quo. Another explanation is fear of regret in making a wrong decision, i.e. If we choose a partner, when we think there could be someone better out there.

Mere Exposure

Mere exposure is an explanation for the status quo bias. Existing states are encountered more frequently than non-existent states and because of this they will be perceived as more true and evaluated more preferably. One way to increase liking for something is repeated exposure over time.

Loss Aversion

Loss aversion also leads to greater regret for action than for inaction; more regret is experienced when a decision changes the status quo than when it maintains it. Together these forces provide an advantage for the status quo; people are motivated to do nothing or to maintain current or previous decisions. Change is avoided, and decision makers stick with what has been done in the past.

Changes from the status quo will typically involve both gains and losses, with the change having good overall consequences if the gains outweigh these losses. A tendency to overemphasize the avoidance of losses will thus favour retaining the status quo, resulting in a status quo bias. Even though choosing the status quo may entail forfeiting certain positive consequences, when these are represented as forfeited “gains” they are psychologically given less weight than the “losses” that would be incurred if the status quo were changed.

The loss aversion explanation for the status quo bias has been challenged by David Gal and Derek Rucker who argue that evidence for loss aversion (i.e. a tendency to avoid losses more than to pursue gains) is confounded with a tendency towards inertia (a tendency to avoid intervention more than to intervene in the course of affairs). Inertia, in this sense, is related to omission bias, except it need not be a bias but might be perfectly rational behaviour stemming from transaction costs or lack of incentive to intervene due to fuzzy preferences.

Omission Bias

Omission bias may account for some of the findings previously ascribed to status quo bias. Omission bias is diagnosed when a decision maker prefers a harmful outcome that results from an omission to a less harmful outcome that results from an action.

Overall implications of a study conducted by Ilana Ritov and Jonathan Baron, regarding status quo and omission biases, reveal that omission bias may further be diagnosed when the decision maker is unwilling to take preference from any of the available options given to them, thus enabling reduction of the number of decisions where utility comparison and weight is unavoidable.

Detection

The reversal test: when a proposal to change a certain parameter is thought to have bad overall consequences, consider a change to the same parameter in the opposite direction. If this is also thought to have bad overall consequences, then the onus is on those who reach these conclusions to explain why our position cannot be improved through changes to this parameter. If they are unable to do so, then we have reason to suspect that they suffer from status quo bias. The rationale of the reversal test is: if a continuous parameter admits of a wide range of possible values, only a tiny subset of which can be local optima, then it is prima facie implausible that the actual value of that parameter should just happen to be at one of these rare local optima.

Neural Activity

A study found that erroneous status quo rejections have a greater neural impact than erroneous status quo acceptances. This asymmetry in the genesis of regret might drive the status quo bias on subsequent decisions.

A study was done using a visual detection task in which subjects tended to favour the default when making difficult, but not easy, decisions. This bias was suboptimal in that more errors were made when the default was accepted. A selective increase in sub-thalamic nucleus (STN) activity was found when the status quo was rejected in the face of heightened decision difficulty. Analysis of effective connectivity showed that inferior frontal cortex, a region more active for difficult decisions, exerted an enhanced modulatory influence on the STN during switches away from the status quo.

Research by University College London scientists that examines the neural pathways involved in ‘status quo bias’ in the human brain and found that the more difficult the decision we face, the more likely we are not to act. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), looked at the decision-making of participants taking part in a tennis ‘line judgement’ game while their brains were scanned using functional MRI (fMRI). The 16 study participants were asked to look at a cross between two tramlines on a screen while holding down a ‘default’ key. They then saw a ball land in the court and had to make a decision as to whether it was in or out. On each trial, the computer signalled which was the current default option – ‘in’ or ‘out’. The participants continued to hold down the key to accept the default and had to release it and change to another key to reject the default. The results showed a consistent bias towards the default, which led to errors. As the task became more difficult, the bias became even more pronounced. The fMRI scans showed that a region of the brain known as the sub-thalamic nucleus (STN) was more active in the cases when the default was rejected. Also, greater flow of information was seen from a separate region sensitive to difficulty (the prefrontal cortex) to the STN. This indicates that the STN plays a key role in overcoming status quo bias when the decision is difficult.

Behavioural Economics and the Default Position

Against this background, two behavioural economists devised an opt-out plan to help employees of a particular company build their retirement savings. In an opt-out plan, the employees are automatically enrolled unless they explicitly ask to be excluded. They found evidence for status quo bias and other associated effects. The impact of defaults on decision making due to status quo bias is not purely due to subconscious bias, as it has been found that even when disclosing the intent of the default to consumers, the effect of the default is not reduced.

An experiment conducted by Sen Geng, regarding status quo bias and decision time allocation, reveal that individuals allocate more attention to default options in comparison to alternatives. This is due to individuals who are mainly risk-averse who seek to attain greater expected utility and decreased subjective uncertainty in making their decision. Furthermore, by optimally allocating more time and asymmetric attention to default options or positions, the individual’s estimate of the default’s value is consequently more precise than estimates of alternatives. This behaviour thus reflects the individual’s asymmetric choice error, and is therefore an indication of status quo bias.

Conflict

Status-quo educational bias can be both a barrier to political progress and a threat to the state’s legitimacy and argue that the values of stability, compliance, and patriotism underpin important reasons for status quo bias that appeal not to the substantive merits of existing institutions but merely to the fact that those institutions are the status quo.

Relevant Fields

The status quo bias is seen in important real life decisions; it has been found to be prominent in data on selections of health care plans and retirement programmes.

Politics

There is a belief that preference for the status quo represents a core component of conservative ideology in societies where government power is limited and laws restricting actions of individuals exist. Conversely, in liberal societies, movements to impose restrictions on individuals or governments are met with widespread opposition by those that favour the status quo. Regardless of the type of society, the bias tends to hinder progressive movements in the absence of a reaction or backlash against the powers that be.

Ethics

Status quo bias may be responsible for much of the opposition to human enhancement in general and to genetic cognitive enhancement in particular. Some ethicists argue, however, that status quo bias may not be irrational in such cases. The rationality of status quo bias is also an important question in the ethics of disability.

Education

Education can (sometimes unintentionally) encourage children’s belief in the substantive merits of a particular existing law or political institution, where the effect does not derive from an improvement in their ability or critical thinking about that law or institution. However, this biasing effect is not automatically illegitimate or counterproductive: a balance between social inculcation and openness needs to be maintained.

Given that educational curriculums are developed by Governments and delivered by individuals with their own political thoughts and feelings, the content delivered may be inadvertently affected by bias. When Governments implement certain policies, they become the status quo and are then presented as such to children in the education system. Whether through intentional or unintentional means, when learning about a topic, educators may favour the status quo. They may simply not know the full extent of the arguments against the status quo or may not be able to present an unbiased account of each side because of their personal biases.

Health

An experiment to determine if a status-quo bias, toward current medication even when better alternatives are offered—, exists in a stated-choice study among asthma patients who take prescription combination maintenance medications. The results of this study indicate that the status quo bias may exist in stated-choice studies, especially with medications that patients must take daily such as asthma maintenance medications. Stated-choice practitioners should include a current medication in choice surveys to control for this bias.

Retirement Plans

A study in 1986 examined the effect of status quo bias on those planning their retirement savings when given the yearly choice between two investment funds. Participants were able to choose how to proportionally split their retirement savings between the two funds at the beginning of each year. After each year, they were able to amend their chose split without switching costs as their preferences changed. Even though the two funds had vastly different returns in both absolute and relative terms, the majority of participants never switched the preferences across the trial period. Status quo bias was also more evident in older participants as they preferred to stay with their original investment, rather than switching as new information came to light.

In Negotiation

Korobkin’s has studied a link between negotiation and status quo bias in 1998. In this studies shows that in negotiating contracts favour inaction that exist in situations in which a legal standard and defaults from contracts will administer absent action. This involves a biased opinion opposed to alternative solutions. Heifetz’s and Segev’s study in 2004 found support for existence of a toughness bias. It is like so-called endowment effect which affects seller’s behaviour.

Price Management

Status quo bias provides a maintenance role in the theory-practice gap in price management, and is revealed in Dominic Bergers’ research regarding status quo bias and its individual differences from a price management perspective. He identified status quo bias as a possible influencer of 22 rationality deficits identified and explained by Rullkötter (2009), and is further attributed to deficits within Simon and Fassnacht’s (2016) price management process phases. Status quo bias remained as an underlying possible cause of 16 of the 22 rationality deficits. Examples of these can be seen within the analysis phase and implementation phase of price management processes.

Bergers reveal that status quo bias within the former price management process phase potentially led to complete reliance on external information sources that existed traditionally. This bias, through a price management perspective, can be demonstrated when monitoring competitor’s pricing. In the latter phase, status quo bias potentially led to the final price being determined by decentralised staff, which is potentially perpetuated by existing system profitability within price management practices.

Mutual Fund Market

An empirical study conducted by Alexandre Kempf and Stefan Ruenzi examined the presence of status quo bias within the US equity mutual fund market, and the extent in which this depends on the number of alternatives given. Using real data obtained from the US mutual fund market, this study reveals status quo bias influences fund investors, in which a stronger correlation for positive dependence of status quo bias was found when the number of alternatives was larger, and therefore confirms Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988) experimental results.

Economic Research

Status quo bias has a significant impact on economics research and policy creation. Anchoring and adjustment theory in economics is where people’s decision-making and outcome are affected by their initial reference point. The reference point for a consumer is usually the status quo. Status quo bias results in the default option to be better understood by consumers compared to alternatives options. This results in the status quo option providing less uncertainty and higher expected utility for risk-averse decision makers. Status quo bias is compounded by loss aversion theory where consumers see disadvantages as larger than advantages when making decision away from the reference point. Economics can also describe the effect of loss aversion graphically with a consumer’s utility function for losses having a negative and 2 times steeper curve than the utility function for gains. Therefore, they perceive the negative effect of a loss as more significant and will stay with status quo. Consumers choosing the status quo goes against rational consumer choice theory as they are not maximising their utility. Rational consumer choice theory underpins many economic decisions by defining a set of rules for consumer behaviour. Therefore, status quo bias has substantial implications in economic theory.

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An Overview of Regulatory Focus Theory

Published on 01/02/2025 by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

Introduction

Regulatory focus theory (RFT) is a theory of goal pursuit formulated by Columbia University psychology professor and researcher E. Tory Higgins regarding people’s motivations and perceptions in judgement and decision making processes. RFT examines the relationship between the motivation of a person and the way in which they go about achieving their goal. RFT posits two separate and independent self-regulatory orientations: prevention and promotion (Higgins, 1997).

This psychological theory, like many others, is applied in communication, specifically in the subfields of nonverbal communication and persuasion. Chronic regulatory focus is measured using the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (Higgins et al., 2001) or the Regulatory Strength measure. Momentary regulatory focus can be primed or induced.

Background

Regulatory Fit Theory

To understand RFT, it is important to understand another of E. Tory Higgins’ theories: regulatory fit theory. When a person believes that there is “fit”, they will involve themselves more in what they are doing and “feel right” about it. Regulatory fit should not directly affect the hedonic occurrence of a thing or occasion, but should influence a person’s assurance in their reaction to the object or event.

Regulatory fit theory suggests that a match between orientation to a goal and the means used to approach that goal produces a state of regulatory fit that both creates a feeling of rightness about the goal pursuit and increases task engagement (Higgins, 2001, 2005). Regulatory fit intensifies responses, such as the value of a chosen object, persuasion, and job satisfaction.

Regulatory fit does not increase the assessment of a decision; instead when someone feels “right” about their decision, the experience of “correctness and importance” is transferred to the ensuing assessment of the chosen object, increasing its superficial worth. Research suggests that the “feeling right” experience can then sway retrospective or prospective evaluations. Regulatory fit can be manipulated incidentally (outside the context of interest) or integrally (within the context of interest).

Definition

RFT refers to when a person pursues a goal in a way that maintains the person’s own personal values and beliefs, also known as regulatory orientation. This theory operates on the basic principle that people embrace pleasure but avoid pain, and they then maintain their regulatory fit based on this standard.

The regulatory focus is basically the way in which someone approaches pleasure but avoids pain. An individual’s regulatory focus concentrates on desired end-states, and the approach motivation used to go from the current state to the desired end-state. This theory differentiates between a promotion-focus on hopes and accomplishments, also known as gains. This focus is more concerned with higher level gains such as advancement and accomplishment.

Another focus is the prevention-focus based on safety and responsibilities, also known as non-losses. This focus emphasizes security and safety by following the guidelines and the rules.

These two regulatory focuses regulate the influences that a person would be exposed to in the decision-making process, and determine the different ways they achieve their goal, as discussed by RFT. An individual’s regulatory orientation is not necessarily fixed. While individuals have chronic tendencies towards either promotion or prevention, these preferences may not hold for all situations. Furthermore, a specific regulatory focus can be induced.

The value taken from interaction and goal attainment can be either positive or negative. The decision has positive value when people attempt to attain their goal in a way that fits their regulatory orientation and it will have negative value when people attempt to attain their goal in a way that does not fit their regulatory orientation. Regulatory fit allows value to be created by intensifying the commitment, based on one of the regulatory focus orientations. Making choices and fulfilling objectives are considered as activities, and with any activity, people can be more or less involved. When this involvement is strong, it can intensify the feelings and values about this activity, and the approach to the activity determines whether they are or are not satisfied with the outcome and method of achieving the outcome.

This theory has noteworthy implications for increasing the value of life. For example, in interpersonal conflict, if each person experiences “fit”, each one will be satisfied with and committed to the outcome. In the broad sense, for people to appreciate their own lives, they need to be satisfied and “feel right” about what they are doing, and the way they are doing it. If it is not satisfying, it is known as “non-fit”, and they will not reach their desired goal.

Goal Attainment and Motivation

Regulatory focus theory, according to Higgins, views motivation in a way that allows an understanding of the foundational ways we approach a task or a goal. Different factors can motivate people during goal pursuit, and we self-regulate our methods and processes during our goal pursuit. RFT proposes that motivational strength is enhanced when the manner in which people work toward a goal sustains their regulatory orientation. Achieving a goal in a way that is consistent to a person’s regulatory orientation leads to an individual sense of importance to the event. The impact of motivation is considered calculated and this creates a greater sense of commitment to the goal. The more strongly an individual is engaged (i.e. involved, occupied, fully engrossed) in an activity, the more intense the motivational force experienced. Engagement is of great importance to attain and motivate in order to reach a goal. Engagement serves as intensifier of the directional component of the value experience. An individual who is strongly engaged in a goal pursuits will experience a positive target more positively and a negative target more negatively.

Individuals can pursue different goals with diverse regulatory orientations and in unlike ways. There are two different kinds of regulatory orientations that people use to obtain their goals: promotion-focus orientation and prevention-focus orientation. These terms are derived from E. Tory Higgins’s Theory of Regulatory Focus. In which, he adds to the notion that people regulate their goal-oriented behaviour in two very distinct ways, coined promotion-focus orientation and prevention-focus orientation

E. Tory Higgins uses this example: there is Student A and Student B, and they both have the shared goal to make an A in a class they are both taking in college. Student A uses a promotion-focus orientation which slants them towards achieving their goal and towards advancement, growth and life accomplishment. This would cause Student A to view the goal as an ideal that satisfies their need for accomplishment. Student B uses a prevention-focus orientation where the goal is something that should be realised because it fulfils their need for security, protection and prevention of negative outcomes. Student A uses an eager approach where they read extra materials to obtain their goal of an A. Student B uses a vigilant approach where they become more detail oriented and pay careful attention to completing all of the course requirements.

Both forms of regulatory orientation can work to fulfil goals, but the choice of orientation is based on individual preferences and style. When a person pursues their goal in the focus that fits their regulatory orientation, they are more likely to pursue their goal more eagerly and aggressively than if they were using the other focus. In this case each student has different styles. They both feel more comfortable in persuading their goal. The outcome in this experiment would have been different if the students were given an undesirable choice.

When people make decisions, they often envision the possible “pleasure or pain” of the possible outcomes that the focus orientation will produce. A person imagining making a pleasing choice is more likely to engage in promotion-focus orientation because envisioning the possible outcome of success maintains eagerness about the outcome but does not place importance on vigilance. A person imagining the possible pain by making an undesirable choice maintains more vigilance but less eagerness.

A person with promotion-focus orientation is more likely to remember the occasions where the goal is pursued by using eagerness approaches and less likely to remember occasions where the goal is pursued by vigilance approaches. A person with prevention-focus orientation is more likely to remember events where the goal is pursued by means of vigilance than if it was pursued using eagerness approaches.

Application

Regulatory Focus Theory and Persuasion

When relating regulatory focus theory to persuasion, it is important to remember that RFT is a goal-attainment theory, and that RFT can spawn feelings of rightness/wrongness which in turn may produce formulations for judgements.

The feelings of rightness give an individual more commitment to the information coming in and therefore can avoid endangering their regulatory fit which in turn changes their regulatory focus and accepting a probable motive to change. If a person experiences feelings of wrongness they will suffer negative emotions and deem the experience and information as a threat to their regulatory fit and therefore a threat to their regulatory focus and their goal.

Studies have been done where fit and focus have been applied to show their applicability to consumer purchasing, health advisories, and social policy issues. To be persuaded is to change your prior feelings, actions, and/or beliefs on a matter to where you agree with the persuader.

The “fit” involved in RFT plays a large role in such issues and stories because it can be a device to help an individual receive and review the experience during a particular message delivery. Positive reinforcement and feelings of rightness while decoding the message creates a stronger engagement and relationship with processing the message, and negative reinforcement and feelings of wrongness lessens the engagement and attachment.

Researchers found that targeting the two different regulatory focus orientations, and their coinciding types of fit, works as an effective process to aid in persuasive charm or pull when they introduced a manner of persuasion where the framing of the message was everything and the content was irrelevant to uphold or interrupt a person’s regulatory fit and follow the pattern of logic used in regulatory orientation.

Lee and Aaker (2004) conducted an experiment that involved whether or not to give their information in a prevention-focus- or promotion-focus-concerning way. The study involved an advertisement for a grape juice drink, which they split into two to create prevention-focus concerns (disease-preventing) and then promotion-focus concerns (energy enhancement). In doing so, they demonstrated that rather than trying to know each individual recipient’s qualities, one needs only to start by nailing the focus (prevention/promotion) and then framing the message so that it creates that “rightness”.

Some may confuse RFT with regulatory fit, regulatory relevance, message matching, and source attractiveness in such an example. The extent of similarities between closely related theories of RFT, such as ones stated above, make it hard to clarify when this theory is applicable or apparent in respect to the persuasion process.

Regulatory Focus Theory and Nonverbal Communication

RFT can be a useful outline for a better understanding of the effects of nonverbal cues in persuasion and impression formation. Regulatory Fit Theory suggests that the effect of a cue cannot be understood without remembering what the cue means given a recipient’s focus orientation.

Nonverbal cues can be used by the message source to vary delivery style, more specifically to convey eagerness or vigilance, of a given message in a way that will produce regulatory fit in message recipients of different focus orientations.

Advancement implies eager movement forward, so eagerness is conveyed by gestures that involve animated, broad opening movements such as hand movements projecting outward, forward leaning body positions, fast body movement, and fast speech rate. Caution implies vigilant carefulness, so vigilance should be conveyed by gestures that show precision like slightly backward-leaning body positions, slower body movement, and slower speech rate.

An eager nonverbal delivery style will result in greater message effectiveness for promotion-focus recipients than for prevention-focus recipients, while the opposite is true for a vigilant nonverbal style.

There are various aspects, which may contribute to whether or not a message’s persuasive element is successful. One aspect is the effect of nonverbal cues and their association with persuasive appeals based on the message recipient’s motivational regulatory orientation. This determines the recipient’s impression of the source during impression formation.

Research has found that nonverbal cues are an essential element of most persuasive appeals. RFT creates the background that allows a prediction for when and for whom a nonverbal cue can have an effect on persuasion. When nonverbal cues and signals are used appropriately, they increase the effectiveness of persuasion.

Moral Judgement

RFT has also been applied within moral psychology to the topic of moral judgment, contrasting the notions of “oughts” and “ideals.”

References

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Book: Pharmacotherapy Casebook – A Patient-Focused Approach

Published on 06/23/2020 by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

Book Title:

Pharmacotherapy Casebook – A Patient-Focused Approach.

Author(s): Terry Schwinghammer. Julia Koehler, Jill Borchert, Douglas Slain, and Sharon Park.

Year: 2020.

Edition: Eleventh (11ed).

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education.

Type(s): Paperback and Kindle.

Synopsis:

Packed with 157 patient cases, Pharmacotherapy Casebook: A Patient-Focused Approach builds your problem-solving and decision-making skills, so you can identify and resolve the most common drug therapy challenges you will encounter in daily practice.

Its case-based approach is also ideal for PharmD, Nurse Practitioner, and other allied health courses. Providing a consistent, practical approach, this authoritative guide delivers everything you need to master patient communication, care plan development, and documenting interventions. Case chapters are organised into system sections that correspond to those of the companion textbook.

Sharpen your ability to:

Identify actual or potential drug therapy problems.
Determine the desired therapeutic outcome.
Evaluate therapeutic alternatives.
Design an optimal individualised pharmacotherapeutic plan.
Evaluate the therapeutic outcome
Provide patient education.
Communicate and implement the therapeutic plan.

Develop expertise in pharmacotherapy decision making with:

Realistic patient presentations that include medial history, physical examination, and laboratory data, followed by a series of questions using a systematic, problem-solving approach
A broad range of cases – from a single disease state to multiple disease states and drug-related problems
Expert coverage that integrates the biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences with therapeutics
Appendices containing sample answer to several cases and valuable information on medical abbreviations, laboratory tests, mathematical conversion factors, and anthropometrics