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Published in final edited form as: Psychol Sci. 2013 Nov 25;25(1):179–187. doi: 10.1177/0956797613502363

Repeating the Past: Prevention Focus Motivates Repetition, Even For Unethical Decisions

Shu Zhang 1, James FM Cornwell 1, E Tory Higgins 1
PMCID: PMC3899102  NIHMSID: NIHMS512086  PMID: 24277774

Abstract

Prevention-focused individuals are motivated to maintain the status quo. Given this, we predicted that individuals with a strong prevention focus, either as a chronic predisposition or situationally induced, would treat their initial decision of how to behave on a first task as the status quo, and thus be motivated to repeat that decision on a subsequent task—even for decisions that are ethically questionable. Five studies supported this prediction in multiple ethical domains: whether or not to overstate performance (Studies 1, 2a, 2b), to disclose disadvantageous facts (Study 3), and to pledge a donation (Study 4). The prevention-repetition effect was observed when initial and subsequent decisions were in the same domain (Studies 1-3) and in different domains (Study 4). Alternative accounts such as justification for the initial decision and preference for consistency were ruled out (Study 2b).

Keywords: Motivation, Morality, ethics, regulatory focus, prevention focus, slippery slope

One of the most tenacious problems facing our society is the frequent occurrence of repeated transgressions: salespersons forge one sale after another to meet financial targets (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004); managers overstate firm earnings in growing amounts (Schrand & Zechman, 2012); auditors escalate one questionable call into overt violations (Moore, Tetlock, Tanlu, & Bazerman, 2006); police officers fail to resist small but frequent bribes (Ashforth & Anand, 2003). A significant portion of transgressions can be attributed to repeated violations (Clinard & Yeager, 1980), yet little is known about repeated ethical decision-making (Pfarrer, Decelles, & Smith, & Taylor, 2008). As Darley (1992) put it: “the question is not whether or not to commit an immoral act. It is what to do when such an act has been committed (p. 215).”

Even studies that adopt a relational, process view of ethical decision-making yield equivocal findings on how one decision influences another. According to a dynamic view of moral self, people feel entitled to act unethically after incurring “moral credits” from a good deed, and they feel propelled to act ethically following a misconduct that created “moral debits”, both indicating a reverse in the ethical stance of a previous decision (Monin & Jordan, 2009; Zhong, Ku, Lount, & Murnighan, 2010). However, one decision can elicit more similar ones, as evidenced by transgressions that occur along a slippery slope, where a sequence of decisions follow a gradual erosion pattern (Ashforth & Anand, 2003; Schrand & Zechman, 2012; Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004). These opposite predictions thus beg the question: When will one decision be followed by a similar one?

The present research addresses this question by focusing on the role of self-regulation in ethical decision-making. Specifically, we draw on regulatory focus theory as one way to explain the motivation behind repeating a previous decision regardless of its ethicality. Regulatory focus theory distinguishes between two self-regulatory orientations: a promotion focus, which is concerned with advancement through making a change from the status quo (“0”) to a new better state (“+1”), and a prevention focus, which is concerned with security through maintaining the status quo (“0”) against a worse state (“−1”) (Higgins, 1997, 1998). Hence, when at the status quo, prevention-focused individuals generally prefer conservative maintenance strategies (Crowe & Higgins, 1997; Friedman & Förster, 2001). For example, prevention-focused individuals would prefer to resume a prior interrupted task or keep currently possessed objects, whereas promotion-focused individuals are more open to switching to new alternatives in both cases (Liberman, Idson, Camacho, & Higgins, 1999).

Given that maintaining the status quo is a fit strategy for prevention-focused individuals (Higgins, 2005), they are expected to repeat a prior decision independent of its ethical value. This is because past decisions indicate “the ways things are done”, creating a de facto rule that is incorporated in personal standards for gauging a new decision (Greve, Palmer, & Pozner, 2010). People are motivated to adjust personal standards to fit a questionable past decision (Gino & Bazerman, 2009). This notion finds support in the “self-herding” phenomenon, where people refer to their past behavior for guidance of new behaviors (Ariely, 2009). Even as observers, people tend to approve of the unethical behaviors of another person that occurred gradually (Gino & Bazerman, 2009). What we propose is that prevention-focused individuals will be motivated to repeat a past decision, even when it was unethical, in order to maintain the status quo that was created by the past decision.

One might predict instead that prevention-focused individuals would feel bad after making an initial unethical decision, such as feeling guilty or ashamed (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007), causing them to be cautious about repeating it in order to avoid these negative feelings again. However, what is most important to prevention-focused individuals—the essence of prevention—is to maintain the status quo (Halvorson & Higgins, 2013; Higgins, 2012). As a behavioral tactic that fulfills this underlying motivation, repeating a prior decision creates a fit experience that feels right, independent of the hedonic feelings associated with the behavior being repeated (Higgins, 2005, 2012). Indeed, research has found that the prevention concerns for repeating past behaviors trumps hedonic concerns about those behaviors. For example, prevention-focused individuals are motivated to repeat the managing behaviors of their former manager, even when they consider those behaviors as unpleasant or ineffective (Zhang, Higgins, & Chen, 2011).

Five studies tested the hypothesis that a chronic or induced prevention focus predicts repeating the ethical stance of a prior decision. Each study included two consecutive tasks where participants made decisions in one of three ethical domains including whether or not: 1) to overstate own performance (Studies 1, 2a, 2b); 2) to disclose disadvantageous facts to an interested party (Study 3); and 3) to pledge a donation (Study 4). In addition to testing repetition of decisions within the same domain (Studies 1-3), we evaluated the possibility of repeating the ethical stance of decisions across different domains, such as initially refusing to donate and subsequently overstating own performance (Study 4).

STUDY 1

In Study 1, participants completed two consecutive tasks that each presented an opportunity to cheat by overstating their performance for potential gain. We predicted that a stronger chronic prevention focus would lead to a greater cheating likelihood on the second task following the decision to cheat than not cheat on the first task.

Method

Eighty-seven college students (30 males1) participated in an experiment that included two tasks: a general knowledge quiz and an anagram task. For each task, participants could win a $100 lottery if their performance ranked in the top half of all participants. At the end of the general knowledge quiz (Mazar, Amir & Ariely, 2008), participants received feedback on their performance and a slightly overstated score, and asked to accept or reject the score (Weiss & Johar, 2012). Because participants were aware of the overstatement, accepting the score or entering another overstated score after rejecting this score would indicate cheating. Participants then worked on the anagram task. When finished, they viewed the key and reported how many anagrams they solved. We used the Carbonless Anagram Method to detect intentional cheating in an inconspicuous manner (Ruedy & Schweitzer, 2011), which allowed us to compare self-report performance with true performance. Finally, we measured participants’ chronic prevention and promotion foci as two separate dimensions (Higgins et al., 2001).

Results

Table 1 shows the percentages of participants cheating on the two tasks. Logistic regressions showed that initial cheating on the quiz did not affect subsequent cheating on the anagram task2, B = 0.56, exp(B) = 1.75, p = .25. However, prevention focus and initial cheating had an interactive effect on subsequent cheating, B = 1.18, exp(B) = 3.27, p = .03. Simple slope tests showed that participants with a strong prevention focus were more likely to overstate anagram performance after cheating than not cheating on the quiz, t(81) = 2.27, p = .03, whereas participants with a weak prevention focus did not show this tendency, t(81) = −0.85, p = .40 (Fig. 1). There was no interaction between promotion focus and initial cheating, B = 0.25, exp(B) = 1.29, p = .61.

Table 1.

Percentages of Participants Making Less Than Ethical Decisions (Studies 1–4)

Study 1 Study 2a Study 2b Study 3 Study 4
Initial decision 57 53 59 58 61
Subsequent decision 31 30 32 84 43
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Figure 1.

Figure 1

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Likelihood of subsequent cheating as a function of chronic prevention focus and initial cheating (Study 1).

Discussion

Study 1 revealed a prevention-repetition effect in two rounds of ethical decision-making: individuals with a strong prevention focus were more likely to inflate performance after doing so on a previous task. Moreover, the fact that prevention focus did not directly affect initial or subsequent cheating confirmed the notion that this self-regulatory motive functions to maintain the ethical stance of a previous decision regardless of its ethical value.

STUDIES 2A AND 2B

Studies 2a and 2b situationally induced regulatory focus, which allowed us to test causality of the prevention-repetition effect. Study 2b also tested other prevention-related mechanisms that might account for this effect, including justification for the initial decision and preference for consistency.

Study 2a

Method

Eighty college students (28 males) participated in an experiment. The tasks and procedures were identical to Study 1, except that regulatory focus was not measured but, rather, was experimentally induced by incidental cues and message framing. Participants first drew an escape pathway for a cartoon mouse trapped inside a maze. An owl or a piece of Swiss cheese appeared in the cartoon, serving as incidental cues that can activate prevention and promotion foci, respectively (Friedman & Förster, 2001). Then, at the beginning of both the general knowledge quiz and the anagram task, the same regulatory focus was induced through message framing (Shah, Higgins, & Friedman, 1998). The prevention-focus message emphasized relative losses by telling participants that they were currently in a $100 lottery for each task but would be removed from the lottery if their performance ranked in the bottom half of all participants. The promotion-focus message emphasized relative gains by telling participants that they would be entered in a $100 lottery for each task if their performance ranked in the top half of all participants.

Results

Manipulation checks showed that more participants in the prevention condition reported seeing a mouse hiding from an owl, χ2(1, N = 80) = 80.00, p < .001, and trying to remain in the lottery, χ2(1, N = 80) = 22.25, p < .001, than participants in the promotion condition did. Table 1 shows the percentages of participants cheating on the two tasks. Logistic regressions yielded no effect of initial cheating on subsequent cheating, B = 0.34, exp(B) = 1.40, p = .49. As expected, induced regulatory focus and initial cheating had an interactive effect on subsequent cheating, B = −2.26, exp(|B|) = 9.60, p = .04. Participants with an induced prevention focus were more likely to overstate anagram performance after cheating than not cheating on the initial quiz, B = 1.64, exp(B) = 5.14, p = .06, whereas participants with an induced promotion focus did not exhibit this tendency, B = −0.62, exp(|B|) = 1.87, p = .37 (Fig. 2).

Figure 2.

Figure 2

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Percentage of subsequent cheating as a function of induced prevention focus and initial cheating (Studies 2a & 2b).

Study 2b

Study 2b investigated two alternative accounts for the prevention-repetition effect. First, repeating a prior decision may function to justify the decision (Beauvois, Joule, & Brunetti, 1993), as switching to a new decision constitutes an admission that the prior decision was problematic, which would be more threatening to prevention-focused individuals who don’t want to make mistakes. If this were true, justification of a prior decision should eliminate the motivation to later repeat the prior decision. Another account is that repetition is driven by preference for consistency and perhaps this need is stronger among prevention-focused individuals given their stronger self-evaluative motive for self-certainty (Leonardelli, Lakin, & Arkin, 2007). If this were true, controlling preference for consistency should remove the prevention-repetition effect.

Method

Participants were 63 college students (23 males). The tasks and procedures were identical to Study 2a except for two differences. First, after accepting or rejecting the overstated score for the quiz but before starting the anagram task, participants indicated whether they noticed any error in the score by choosing from a list of statements (Table 2) or write down an open-ended response. Second, we measured participants’ preference for consistency (Cialdini, Trost, & Newsom, 1995).

Table 2.

Justification Statements for the Initial Decision (Study 2b)

Question asked of participants:
To help us improve the new data collection systema, we’d appreciate your feedback on the computer-calculated scores. Did you notice any error in the computer-calculated scores? # Participants
For participants who rejected the inflated score (“65”):
  - I noticed some error so I rejected the wrong score and put in a score that I thought was correct. 30b
  - I didn’t notice any error and found the computer-calculated scores to be reliable. 0
  - Other 0
For participants who accepted the inflated score (“65”):
  - I didn’t notice any error, but I could be wrong as I may have missed it. 14
  - I didn’t notice any error and found the computer-calculated scores to be reliable. 9c
  - I noticed some error but may have accepted a wrong score by accident. 5
  - I wasn’t aware that the data collection is new and may have errors, so I assumed that the computer-calculated scores were reliable. 4
  - Otherd 1
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a

see SOM-R (page 1) for this study detail.

b

Of the 30 participants who rejected the inflated score (“65”), 26 later entered the correct score (“56”), and 4 entered another inflated score (e.g., “58”, “68”, “80”, “80”)

c

The 9 participants might be telling the truth about not noticing the error and thus might not be cheating. However, even when these participants were excluded from the analyses, the relation between initial and subsequent cheating remained significant for participants with an induced prevention focus, B = 2.91, exp(B) =18.41, p = .02, and the relation remained nonsignificant for participants with an induced promotion focus, B = 1.17, exp(B) = 3.21, p = .21.

d

The open-ended response of the participant choosing “Other” was “I couldn’t notice any error, as I had no outside confirmation of how many and which questions I answered incorrectly.”

Results

Again, more participants in the prevention condition reported seeing a mouse hiding from an owl, χ2(1, N = 63) = 63.00, p < .001, and trying to remain in the lottery, χ2(1, N = 63) = 17.80, p < .001, than participants in the promotion condition did. As Table 2 shows, all participants justified their accepting or rejecting the overstated quiz score. Table 1 shows the percentages of participants cheating on the two tasks. Logistic regressions yielded no effect of preference for consistency on initial cheating, B = 0.35, exp(B) = 1.42, p = .48, or subsequent cheating, B = −0.14, exp(|B|) = 1.15, p = .79. Initial and subsequent cheating were positively related, B = 1.43, exp(B) = 4.19, p = .02, which was driven by the prevention focus condition. Controlling preference for consistency, initial cheating predicted subsequent cheating only for participants with an induced prevention focus, B = 2.17, exp(B) = 8.74, p = .03, but not for participants with an induced promotion focus, B = 0.90, exp(B) = 2.46, p = .33 (Fig. 2). Importantly, preference for consistency did not predict repeating the first decision in the second task, B = −0.22, exp(|B|) = 1.25, p = .86.

Discussion

By experimentally inducing regulatory focus, Studies 2a and 2b supported the hypothesized causal effect of prevention focus on repeating a prior decision. Further, Study 2b showed that the prevention-repetition effect still held when participants justified their initial decision before repeating this decision, ruling out the possibility that repetition was driven simply by the need for justification. Preference for consistency was also ruled out as an alternative account. Thus, these results provided additional support for the notion that maintaining the status quo created by a prior decision is the motivation behind repetition.

STUDY 3

Study 3 aimed to generalize the prevention-repetition effect in an interactive context of two-party negotiations, where one party could deceive the other by willfully failing to disclose relevant factual information (Kern & Chugh, 2009; Steinel, Utz, & Koning, 2010). Though perceived less negatively than outright lies, failure to disclose becomes unethical when it can “adversely affect the receiver, who would act very differently if he or she knew the truth being concealed” (Fleming & Zyglidopoulos, 2008, p. 839). This is the case for the decisions examined in this study, where participants having proprietary information could benefit from not disclosing it to the other party who could act differently if given the information.

Method

Eighty-six college students (30 males) participated in a study on negotiation strategies. Paired into 43 dyads, they were randomly assigned to a buyer or seller role and played the same role in two rounds of negotiation. The first round was over the sale of a used car, and the buyer had the incentive to not disclose the intended use of the car as it could raise the seller’s asking price. The second round was over the sale of a real estate property (Karp, Gold, & Tan, 1998), and the buyer had the incentive to not disclose the intended use of the property as it could break the deal.

Buyers were further randomly assigned to have a prevention or promotion focus induced by incentive messages similar to those in Studies 2a and 2b. The prevention-focus message for each round of negotiation emphasized relative losses by telling buyers that they were currently in a $100 lottery but would be removed from this lottery if their purchase price was above the average of all buyers; if no deal was reached, the chance of them being removed from the lottery was 50%. The promotion-focus message emphasized relative gains by telling buyers that they would be entered in a $100 lottery if their purchase price was below the average of all buyers; if no deal was reached, the chance of them being entered in the lottery was 50%.

Results

Manipulation checks showed that more prevention-focused buyers tried to remain in the lottery than promotion-focused buyers did, χ2(1, N = 43) = 13.47, p < .001. Two research assistants independently coded sellers’ reports of what buyers said about their intentions in each round of negotiation (0 disclosure, 1 failure to disclose). Their codings converged for 39 (91%) and 42 dyads (98%) for the first and second round, respectively, and the remaining discrepancies were thoroughly discussed before a final consensus was reached3.

All dyads reached an agreement in the first round, and 34 dyads (79%) reached an agreement in the second round. Table 1 shows the percentages of participants failing to disclose in each round. The higher failure-to-disclose rate in the second round could be because buyers knew they could not fulfill the goal of buying the property if they disclosed true intentions.

Chi-square tests yielded a positive relation between initial and subsequent failures to disclose, χ2(1, N = 43) = 6.61, p = .01, φ = .39, which was moderated by induced regulatory focus, χ2(1, N = 43) = 13.27, p < .001, φ = .56. Buyers with an induced prevention focus were more likely to not disclose in the second round following the decision to not disclose than to disclose in the first round, χ2(1, N = 22) = 9.35, p = .002, φ = .65, whereas buyers with an induced promotion focus did not show this tendency, χ2(1, N = 21) = 0.05, p = .83 (Fig. 3).

Figure 3.

Figure 3

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Percentage of subsequent failure to disclose as a function of induced prevention focus and initial failure to disclose (Study 3).

Discussion

Study 3 generalized the prevention-repetition effect to a social setting where the outcomes of a decision impacted another person and not just oneself. Study 3 induced regulatory focus solely through message framing rather than message framing following a maze cue manipulation as in Studies 2a and 2b. This means that the prevention-repetition effect found in these studies does not depend on the maze cue manipulation that might have also manipulated approach-avoidance motivations (Forster, Friedman, Ozelsel, & Denzler, 2006).

As a long-standing issue, failure to disclose characterizes problems in many fields including financial, medical, legal, and environmental services. Though we measured failure to disclose as a negotiation-specific behavior, our findings may speak to a range of misconducts from passive nondisclosure to fraudulent concealment.

STUDY 4

Previous studies examined repeated decisions in the same ethical domain, such as overstating performance (Studies 1, 2a, 2b) and failing to disclose (Study 3). Study 4 considered whether the prevention-repetition effect might generalize even further by testing the role of prevention focus in repeating the ethical stance of a decision, instead of the decision itself, from one domain (e.g., pledging a donation) to another (e.g., overstating performance).

Method

Fifty-six individuals (22 males) from the Amazon Mechanical Turk completed an online study of motivation and performance. Participants were first introduced to a donation opportunity as an attempt to increase social responsibility (Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009). They could select from a list of six donation recipients or specify any outside one, and indicate an amount that they wished to donate. Then they completed the same general knowledge quiz as in Study 1. Like Study 1, we measured participants' chronic prevention and promotion foci as two separate dimensions.

Results

Table 1 shows the percentages of participants who refused to donate and who later cheated on the quiz. Logistic regressions yielded a marginally significant effect of donation on cheating, B = −1.10, exp(|B|) = 3.00, p = .06, suggesting that the less prosocial decision of refusing to donate increased the cheating likelihood later. More importantly, this effect was driven by an interaction between prevention focus and donation, B = −2.66, exp(|B|) = 14.24, p = .02. Simple slope tests showed that participants with a strong prevention focus were more likely to cheat following the decision to not donate than to donate, t(50) = −3.32, p = .002, whereas participants with a weak prevention focus did not show this tendency, t(50) = 0.09, p = .93 (Fig. 4). The interaction between promotion focus and initial cheating was nonsignificant, B = −1.16, exp(|B|) = 3.18, p = .27.

Figure 4.

Figure 4

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Likelihood of subsequent cheating as a function of chronic prevention focus and initial donation (Study 4).

Discussion

Tested across different domains of ethical decision-making, the notion of repeating the ethical stance of a prior decision was supported for individuals with a strong prevention focus. Extending previous studies, the prevention-repetition effect is not constrained by the domain of a status quo decision. Instead, the broad, cross-domain relevance of this effect corroborates with the notion that “people cognitively categorize fairly disparate activities (e.g., helping and cheating) within a single moral rubric” (Jordan, Mullen, & Murnighan, 2011, p. 710).

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Five studies led to the novel finding that having a chronic or induced prevention focus predicts repeating the ethical stance of a prior decision. The prevention-repetition effect emerged for decisions in multiple ethical domains (overstating performance, failing to disclose, pledging a donation) and when the initial and subsequent decisions were in the same or different domains. The possibilities that this effect was due to prevention-focused individuals’ need to justify their initial decision or to their desire for consistency were ruled out (Study 2b).

There was no prevention effect on generally being ethical or unethical, either on the initial or subsequent decision4. Rather, the prevention effect was on repeating the second time what was done the first time, regardless of its ethical value. Although a prevention focus can lead to more bad feelings about “a sin of commission”, such as overstating performance, than about “a sin of omission”, such as failing to disclose (Camacho, Higgins, & Luger, 2003), the prevention-repetition effect was found for both types of “sins”, as well as for honest decisions, reflecting the motivational strength of fit over hedonic and ethical concerns.

This research complements the traditional view of ethical decision-making as isolated events by providing one explanation for why repeated unethical decisions occur. Notably, a prevention focus can perpetuate unethical decisions, but it can also sustain ethical decisions. What matters is where decision makers initially stand. Bearing a resemblance to “arbitrary coherence” (Ariely, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2003), a prevention focus itself does not dictate the direction individuals arbitrarily take at each ethical crossroad; rather, it serves as a motivator that generates coherent repeated decisions. The path-dependent property of this effect reveals that, in the domain of ethics, maintaining the status quo represents an essential contribution to repeated ethical decision-making when individuals are in a prevention focus.

Our findings delineate a sequential process of ethical degradation related to prevention motivation. There have been process models that describe temporal development of unethical behaviors, such as routinization (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 2004), normalization (Greve et al., 2010), moral seduction (Moore et al., 2006), and gradual erosion (Gino & Bazerman, 2009), and the present research complements these models by adding a regulatory focus motivational element. It is telling, for example, that despite a prevention focus per se having no effect on a single decision, it increases the likelihood of repeating the ethical stance of a decision.

The findings draw attention to the downsides of negative reward systems that penalize transgressors by punishment. Although anticipating punishment can function as a deterrent, research has produced mixed effects of punishment (Ariely et al., 2003). From a regulatory focus perspective, punishment induces prevention concerns (Higgins, 1996), and paradoxically may encourage repeating past wrongs, especially when maintaining the status quo becomes a deeper motivation than hedonic concerns (Higgins, 2005, 2012). One way to alleviate this downside of punishment is to “reset” the status quo by supporting former transgressors in taking new and positive actions to safely reverse previous misconducts and reestablish an ethical status quo.

The prevention-repetition effect can result in bliss or woe, and future work is needed to uncover ways to harvest its benefits and minimize its costs. In our studies, participants received no explicit feedback on their initial decision, which might have supported their using that decision to create the status quo. Because the definition of what is ethical or not is often constructed in relative terms, a social-control agent can play an important role in one’s judgment of whether their decision transgresses the line separating right from wrong (Greve et al., 2010). Hence, feedback that disapproves of an initial unethical decision without evoking physical or psychological threats (e.g., by presenting an ethical exemplar) could prevent creating the status quo from the decision and subsequently repeating the decision.

Footnotes

1

There was no gender effect in Studies 1-4.

2

Regulatory focus has no main effect on initial or subsequent decision in Studies 1-4.

3

Buyers also reported whether they had disclosed true intentions in each round of negotiation. These self-report measures yielded consistent results with the coded measures.

4

Unlike Gino and Margolis’s study (2011), we found no main effect of regulatory focus on initial cheating in Studies 1, 2a, and 2b. Our version of overstating performance was a less active and more ambiguous form of cheating than that used by Gino and Margolis (2011), making cheating less threatening to prevention-focused individuals, which could account for the difference. We also found no main effect of regulatory focus on subsequent cheating, but subsequent cheating was influenced by initial cheating for prevention-focused individuals. There was no main effect of regulatory focus in Studies 3 and 4, where decisions were measured in different ethical domains from the domain studied by Gino and Margolis (2011).

S. Zhang and E.T. Higgins developed the study concept. All authors contributed to the study design. Testing and data collection were performed by S. Zhang and J.F. Cornwell. S. Zhang and J.F. Cornwell performed the data analysis and interpretation under the supervision of E.T. Higgins. S. Zhang drafted the paper, and J.F. Cornwell and E.T. Higgins provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the paper for submission.

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