“I” Seek Pleasures and “We” Avoid Pains:
The Role of Self-Regulatory Goals in Information Processing and Persuasion
By Jennifer L. Aaker
Angela Y. Lee

I think the main objectives that authors in this article would like to determine is to illustrate a regulatory focus theory in which people approach pleasure and avoid pain. According to the theory, there are two types of distinct goals that people have. First, individuals with a promotion focus will regulate their behaviors toward positive outcomes. Second, individuals with a prevention focus will regulate their behaviors away from negative outcomes. For instance, the former is who can set a goal in order to have positive outcomes such as advancement, achievement, and aspirations. The latter is who set a goal in order to avoid negative outcomes such as responsibilities, obligations, and security. Both have different considerations in a decision-making process and arrive at a result that both have different types of final decision-making. In addition, in four experiments, we also have to evaluate ‘accessible self-view’ with behaviors which are taken in the experiments and match the behavior with the self-regulatory theory. Each experiments has each objectives. First experiment has an objective that how the promotion and prevention benefits were manipulated through websites to the collected sample of people. Second experiment has a objective to examine whether individuals whose independent self-view is more accessible have better memory for events presented in a promotion frame, and whether individuals whose interdependent self-view is more accessible have better memory for events presented in a prevention frame. The authors mention in the article about four experiments that they conducted. From those experiments, I identify several hypotheses, methods and results that the authors would like to assume and have as the outcome of the experiments. In first experiments, the authors mention that they evaluated a ‘Welchs.com’ website that is conveyed promotion focused product benefit or prevention focused product benefit. In based on an idea that a ‘self-view’ can be activated by a ‘situational prime’ that shifts an individual’s attention from the construal of self-as-distinct-from-others to that of self-as-connected-to-others, the authors assumes that a interaction between the situational prime and promotional or preventional benefits types. So, a hypothesis in the first experiment is that individuals in an independent situation should have more positive attitudes and brand affinity toward the website since it focuses on the promotion-focused information. Conversely, individuals in an interdependent situation should have more positive attitudes brand affinity toward the website since it focuses to the prevention-focused information. Pretest was conducted by collecting 51 people whose mean-age is 23.10 and 51.1 percentage of the people is female. Test was conducted by collecting a total of 94 Caucasian college students whose mean-age is 23.67 and 43.3 percentage of the people is female. Those students visited four Websites for Welch’s Grape Juices that was sent by e-mail. After they visited the websites, they have to visit a questionnaire link, which has a series of questions regarding the participants’ evaluations of the Web site and brand affinity measures. As the result, the first experiment shows that goal compatibility has an impact on attitudes as measured by perceived effectiveness of the Web site and brand affinity. As the result, people whose independent self-view was made more accessible by the situational prime had more positive impressions of the Web site content that was consistent with a promotion focus, and individuals whose interdependent self was made more accessible had more positive impressions of the Web site content that was consistent with a prevention focus. Second experiment’s objective is to examine whether people whose independent self-view is more accessible have better memory for events presented in a promotion frame, and whether individuals whose interdependent self-view is more accessible have better memory for events presented in a prevention frame. A method is to randomly assign participants to one of the four conditions highlighted above and then completed a filler task that took approximately 20 minutes, including responding to some demographic questions, manipulation checks, and the 31-item Self-Construal Scale. A hypothesis is that individuals whose independent self-view is more accessible should have better recall for promotion-framed information, whereas those whose interdependent self-view is more accessible should have better recall for prevention-framed information. Given that accessibility of self-view is operationalized by a situational prime as well as by culture, a significant interaction between situational prime and frame and a significant interaction between culture and frame would provide support for our hypothesis. As the result, across both cultures, participants whose independent self was made more accessible through a situational prime had better recall of information that was presented in a promotion frame, and individuals whose interdependent self was made more accessible had better recall when the information was presented in a prevention frame. Third experiment’s objective is to test the argument strength as an independent variable by following from the dual process and to examine a robust across different contents in difference variable, in which a variable involves persuasive appeal rather than Websites. In addition, the researchers generalize to a different operationalization of goal compatibility on attitudes when a product is placed to offer promotional and prevention benefits as well as when the bran is placed to offer promotional and prevention benefits. A method is to tell the participants that an advertising campaign for a new tennis racquet was being developed and that the researchers were interested in learning how they may perceive some of the ideas that will be incorporated into the campaign. All participants were then asked to rate the Star tennis racquet on a two-item seven-point scale anchored by unfavorable or favorable and low or high quality. Finally, they completed a manipulation check of argument strength, followed by a series of ancillary measures including demographic information. Hypothesis is If individuals in goal compatible conditions are indeed more discerning than those in goal incompatible conditions, then participants in the independent situational prime condition should be more discerning between the promotion-focused messages, whereas participants in the interdependent situational prime condition should be more discerning between the prevention-focused messages. As the result, when the information presented is important to the self, as in conditions of goal compatibility, individuals scrutinize the information to a greater degree and are more critical of product claims aimed to help attain one’s goal.
Four experiment’s objective is to have more evidence that the effects of goal of compatibility on persuasion across cultural texts by using Chinese participants. A method of the research is to recruit 83 samples of Chinese participants and let them to follow same procedure with experiment 3. Hypothesis is also same with experiment 3. The researchers observe the participants’ attitudes to rate toward the brand on tow seven-point scales anchored by unfavorable or favorable and low or high quality. The result of the experiment shows that it conceptually replicate those in 1st and 3rd experiment that provide a evidence that a goal compatibility effect on persuasion is robust across a different culture. However, their independent self-view is more accessible when they try to think about themselves and tend to focus on a promotion-focused content. As the result, the research shows that people have the distinct self-views, which encourage different perspective on the pursuit of higher order goals such as life value and self-regulatory focus. It is importantly affect on our information processing when we make a decision, and in turn, it affects the pursuit of lower order consumption goals such as benefit sought. In addition, according to a different research by Blockand Anand Keller (1995,) it also refer to a fact that respondents join in more elaborative processing under high involvement and negatively framed rather than positively framed appeals becomes more effective. It is significant for us not only to consider and research more the situations where the two goals of promotion and prevention but also to focus on the next stage of a post-purchasing process between the consumer and brand over time.