关键词: 调节聚焦, 目标追求, 感知相似性

Abstract: Goal is an important source of motivation. Many factors can influence the process of goal pursuit. Researches showed that individual regulatory focus has important influences on goal pursuit. Previous researches had found that, both promotion focus and prevention focus contain motivations to achieve goals. For instance, people with promotion focus may try their best searching for help and resources to make a decision, they can always have more than one choice because they are open to the information that may be useful to goal pursuit, and people with prevention focus may take tactics that can avoid the risk in decision-making. However, literatures revealed that during the course of goal pursuit, individuals would benefit more from promotion focus than from prevention focus. Significant others can be another factor that can influence goal pursuit. Previous researches showed that the regulatory focus could influence people’s relationship and interaction with others. On the other hand, the perceived similarity with others can improve the quality of interpersonal relationship, furthermore, people are more likely to pursuit goals that their significant others like. Thus, the perceived similarity with partner might be an important factor that influences the pursuit of a goal, which means the similarity could be the possible mechanism underlying the relation. This study attempted to explore how individual regulatory focus and partner regulatory focus interplay to influence the goal pursuit process, as well as the possible mediating role of perceived similarity. A total of 170 college students completed General Regulatory Focus Measures, then they were randomly allocated into one of the two groups (partner promotion focus group, and partner prevention focus group), finally they finished the decision-making tasks and goal pursuit questionnaire, as well as the perceived similarity scale. The hierarchical regression showed that, the interaction between individual promotion focus and companion promotion focus can significantly positively predict partner’s value, help-seeking intention, and the level of task motivation. Simple slope tests further indicated that, participants’ goal pursuit would benefit from promotion focus among participants with a high promotion focus partner rather than among participants with a low promotion focus partner. Furthermore, the mediating effect analysis showed that the interaction of partner and individual promotion focus and help-seeking intention, partner’s value can be partially mediated by perceived similarity; however, the perceived regulatory similarity can not mediate the relationship between the interaction of partner and individual promotion focus and the motivation level. In general, individual regulatory focus and partner regulatory focus interact to influence the process of goal pursuit. Partner’s regulatory focus can moderate the relationship between personal regulatory focus and goal pursuit, the positive effect of promotion focus mainly appears among participants with a high promotion focus partner, but not among participants with a low promotion focus partner; furthermore, the interaction of partner promotion focus and individual promotion focus on goal pursuit is partially mediated by perceived similarity.

Key words: regulatory focus, goal pursuit, perceived similarity