Manipulating regulatory focus in cigarette smokers

Regulatory focus theory (RFT; Higgins, 1997) may help to address the issue of motivation in cigarette smoking cessation. RFT suggests that individuals may be motivated to approach desired end-states (e.g., improved lung capacity) and/or avoid undesired end-states (e.g., illness). These motivations are referred to as promotion focus, in which people attempt to achieve their aspirations, and prevention focus, in which people are motivated to live up to responsibilities. According to RFT, smoking-related messages framed to match an individual's regulatory focus should be more effective than those that do not match. The current study attempted to prime promotion and prevention focus in a sample of cigarette smokers, to determine if priming impacts memory for smoking-related narratives. We expected that participants in the promotion-focus condition would outperform those in the prevention-focus condition on recall of materials reflecting approach strategies, whereas those in the prevention-focus condition would score better on recall of vignettes depicting avoidance. This hypothesis was not supported. There was, however, a significant interaction between participants' recall of vignettes depicting smoking vs. abstaining and approach vs. avoidance strategies, such that participants recalled smoking vignettes better when the described-person's goal was smoking to avoid an undesired state and recalled abstaining vignettes better when the target's goal was to approach a desired state. Further research into how regulatory focus theory may apply to adult cigarette smokers is warranted.