Are there gender differences in promotion–prevention self‐regulatory focus?

Dinah Gutermuth and Melvyn Hamstra
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Dinah Gutermuth: University of Exeter
Melvyn Hamstra: LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: The purpose of this research is to examine gender differences in promotion/prevention self‐regulatory focus, a dispositional motivational orientation with major implications for human functioning. First, a review of literature using social cognitive theory as a framework suggests that, driven by socialization processes, (1) women may on average be more prevention focused than men – meaning more vigilant to maintain a secure status quo, whereas (2) men may on average be more promotion focused than women – meaning more eager to advance to a better situation than their status quo. Second, we provide data to examine these possible gender differences in self‐regulatory focus with secondary analyses of (a) our own existing data on dispositional regulatory focus and of (b) a large scale, representative panel study (LISS Survey). The data suggest a highly consistent difference with women being more prevention focused than men, while the difference in promotion focus is much smaller and is only found in European samples. Auxiliary data suggest promotion‐focused women hold less traditional gender role beliefs as well as showing that regulatory focus partially explains examples of behavioural differences between men and women. The analysis of gender difference in regulatory focus sheds new light on gender differences and biases already known, and on regulatory focus, and as such opens up many new and important areas of future inquiry.

Date: 2023-11-20
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Published in British Journal of Psychology, 2023, 115 (2), pp.306-323. ⟨10.1111/bjop.12688⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04547067

DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12688

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