Motivated Strategies for Judgment: How Preferences for Particular Judgment Processes can Affect Judgment Outcomes

Beyond motivations to achieve particular outcomes, people also have motivations to use particular strategies while pursuing these outcomes. This article integrates research on the latter strategic preferences and discusses the place of such research in the broader investigation of motivated thinking. A review of studies examining the strategic preferences stemming from both motivations for promotion versus prevention (Higgins, 1997) and motivations for locomotion versus assessment (Higgins, Kruglanski, & Pierro, 2003) illustrates that these preferences have unique effects on basic processes of judgment, including the evaluation of alternative hypotheses or counterfactuals, the prioritization of fast versus accurate information processing, and the recall and activation of knowledge from memory. Moreover, this review also demonstrates important interactions between strategic preferences and outcome preferences. Strategic preferences thus appear to make distinct and important contributions to understanding how motivation influences judgment and should feature prominently in general analyses of motivated thinking. At some point, most of us have indulged in ‘‘wishful thinking’’ or ‘‘let our hearts run away with our heads.’’ That is, we have engaged in motivated thinking and experienced the effects of our needs, desires, and goals on our information processing, perceptions, and reasoning. Indeed, much research has found motivated thinking to be pervasive in both everyday and high-stakes judgment and decision-making (Dunning, 1999; Kunda, 1990; Kruglanski, 1996; for recent overviews see Balcetis, 2008; Molden & Higgins, 2005, forthcoming). However, such research has primarily focused on how the types of outcomes people are motivated to reach during judgment, such as concluding that they are virtuous (Dunning, 1999), socially connected (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and in control (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), create biases that make these desired conclusions more likely. This article describes an alternate approach to motivated thinking that examines how motivation affects judgment by influencing not only the conclusions people desire to reach, but also the manner in which they prefer to form these conclusions. Several separate programs of research have shown that such preferences for particular strategies of information processing during judgment also have important effects on the conclusions people reach (Higgins & Molden, 2003; Kruglanski, Orehek, Higgins, Pierro, & Shalev, 2010). The present review integrates this research on strategic preferences and discusses its relationship to the broader literature on motivated thinking. Strategy-Oriented Versus Outcome-Oriented Motivations Success in one’s personal and professional life is an outcome that most people desire. As noted, this desire (among others) can then alter how information processing is initiated, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 6/2 (2012): 156–169, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00424.x a 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd implemented, and utilized so as to produce more generous evaluations of how well one is achieving such outcomes (Kunda, 1990; Molden & Higgins, 2005, forthcoming). However, most people are also motivated to pursue success (and other desired outcomes) in what they perceive to be ‘‘right way’’ (Higgins, 2000, 2008). These additional motivations can then influence the value they place on pursuing some means and strategies for success (e.g., innovation, risk-taking, and decisive action) over others (e.g., vigilance, caution, and exhaustive analysis). Such differing values then, in turn, alter people’s information processing so as to conform to their valued strategies (Higgins & Molden, 2003; Scholer & Higgins, 2008). Thus, although past discussions of how motivation affects basic judgment processes primarily focus on the effects of outcome-oriented motivations, strategy-oriented motivations can have profound effects the on initiation and utilization of these processes as well. Furthermore, beyond representing an additional influence of motivation on judgment, strategy-oriented motivations operate differently from outcome-oriented motivations in important ways. People typically recognize that simply endorsing judgment outcomes they prefer is neither wise nor acceptable; therefore they may often attempt at least some adjustment for the anticipated effects of their outcome preferences (even if they frequently do not eliminate these effects; Kunda, 1990). However, because people’s preferred strategies essentially involve perceptions about the right way to form judgments, they should have little inclination to adjust for these preferences. Moreover, because people do not have the same access to the processes by which they arrive at judgments as they do to judgment outcomes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), even were they to try to adjust for their strategic preferences, they would be more likely to fail. Thus, although less frequently discussed, the effects of strategy-oriented motivations on judgment may at times be more subtle and more difficult to correct (cf. Lerner & Tetlock, 1999; Lind & Tyler, 1988), which illustrates the importance of more fully integrating such motivations into broader analyses of motivated thinking. Sources of Strategic Preferences: Regulatory Focus and Regulatory Mode Preferences for particular strategies of judgment can arise from motivations related to any specific means or procedures of judgment and can affect any strategy that is perceived to match and sustain such motivations (Higgins, 2000, 2008). However, existing research on strategic preferences has almost exclusively involved one of two different classes of motivation: people’s regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997) or their regulatory mode (Higgins et al., 2003). Regulatory focus describes the distinction between promotion concerns with attaining growth and ensuring against missed opportunities versus prevention concerns with maintaining security and ensuring against threats. Whereas promotion concerns foster representations of goals as hopes and aspirations to be attained, prevention concerns foster representations of goals as responsibilities and obligations to be maintained. Thus, because they revolve around attaining growth, promotion concerns create preferences (at either a conscious or unconscious level) for eager strategies that emphasize seeking opportunities for gain, even at the risk of committing errors and accepting losses. In contrast, because they revolve around maintaining security, prevention concerns create preferences for vigilant strategies that emphasize a narrower focus on protecting against loss, even at the risk of missing opportunities for gain (Higgins, 1997; Molden, Lee, & Higgins, 2008). Regulatory mode describes a separate distinction between locomotion concerns with initiating action and making progress versus assessment concerns with critical analysis and evaluation. Whereas locomotion concerns foster a primary focus on doing something, Motivated Strategies 157 a 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Social and Personality Psychology Compass 6/2 (2012): 156–169, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00424.x anything, to move closer to achieving one’s goals, assessment concerns foster a primary focus on ensuring that one is doing the right thing before continuing goal pursuit. Thus, because they revolve around movement, locomotion concerns create preferences (again at either a conscious or unconscious level) for strategies of progressive elimination and moving from evaluation to evaluation to sustain feelings of continuous progress. In contrast, because they revolve around analysis, assessment concerns create preferences for strategies of exhaustive comparison and delayed action to sustain feelings of thoroughness (Higgins et al., 2003; Kruglanski et al., 2000). Given all of these influences on people’s judgment strategies, differences in concerns with promotion versus prevention or locomotion versus assessment should affect the processes by which people form their judgments even when preferences for judgment outcomes are the same. For example, among individuals who are all focused on achieving the most accurate outcome possible, stronger promotion concerns should lead to broad consideration of any possible information that could be relevant for attaining accuracy, whereas stronger prevention concerns should lead to narrow consideration of only the information that is most relevant to eliminate mistakes. Similarly, stronger locomotion concerns should lead to reviewing each available piece of information and quickly deciding its importance, whereas stronger assessment concerns should lead to thoroughly comparing and analyzing the relative importance of all the available information. Several additional features of these distinctions between strategic preferences are also worth noting. First, a greater focus on any of concerns described above often exists as a chronic individual difference (Higgins et al., 2001; Kruglanski et al., 2000). However, because everyone possesses some desire for both growth and security and for both progress and accuracy, everyone may also have any one of these concerns temporarily primed by particular contexts, incentives, or situational constraints (see Kruglanski et al., 2010; Molden et al., 2008). Furthermore, although, in some circumstances, concerns related to regulatory focus and regulatory mode might produce similar-looking judgment strategies, these concerns are conceptually independent. For example, both a broad, promotionfocused consideration of any possibly relevant information and a narrow, preventionfocused consideration of the most probably relevant information could be implemented either using a rapid, locomotion-focused acceptance versus elimination or a more thorough, assessment-focused comparative analysis. Thus these two different sources of strategic preferences can simultaneously and independently affect judgment processes. Effects of Strategic Preferences on Basic Judgment Processes Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review of all the documented influences of regulatory focus or regulatory mode on judgment and behavior (see Kruglanski et al., 2010; Molden et al., 2008); in this article, I thus focus on the most basic effects of the strategic preferences created by these motivational orientations on information processing during judgment. As shown in Table 1, the types of effects investigated thus far include the generation and evaluation of alternative hypotheses or counterfactuals, the prioritization of fast versus accurate information processing, and the selective recall and activation of knowledge from memory. Consideration of alternatives Evaluating alternative hypotheses or choice options is central to most judgment processes. Most of the information people encounter in their daily experiences involves some 158 Motivated Strategies a 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Social and Personality Psychology Compass 6/2 (2012): 156–169, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00424.x T a b le 1 A su m m ar y o f ef fe ct s o f p re fe rr ed ju d g m en t st ra te g ie s ar is in g fr o m m o ti va ti o n s fo r p ro m o ti o n ve rs u s p re ve n ti o n an d fo r lo co m o ti o n ve rs u s as se ss m en t o n b as ic ju d g m en t p ro ce ss es M o ti v a ti o n P re fe rr e d st ra te g y E ff e ct s o n