title: Repeating the past: prevention focus motivates repetition, even for unethical decisions.
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 on how to behave on a first task as the status quo and would thus be motivated to repeat that decision on a subsequent task-even for decisions that were ethically questionable. Results from five studies supported this prediction in multiple ethical domains: whether or not to overstate performance (Studies 1, 2a, and 2b), whether or not to disclose disadvantageous facts (Study 3), and whether or not to pledge a donation (Study 4). The prevention-repetition effect was observed both when the initial and subsequent decisions were in the same domain (Studies 1-3) and when they were in different domains (Study 4). Alternative accounts for this effect, such as justification for the initial decision and preference for consistency, were ruled out (Study 2b).
authors.affiliation: Columbia University.
authors.forename: Shu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: James F M
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Cornwell
authors.forename: E Tory
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Higgins
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009014:Morals; D009042:Motivation / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ethics; morality; motivation; prevention focus; regulatory focus; slippery slope