Exploration and effortful self-control are promotion and prevention-focused experiences. This research examined how exploration and self-control differ in support for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and it compared them to experiences of pursuing hopes and duties, which are common ways to define promotion and prevention focus. It randomly assigned participants (N = 704) to describe a personal experience of exploration or self-control and rate their need support. Analyses compared need support between exploration and self-control conditions, and with the hopes, duties, and “your day yesterday” conditions (N = 867) of previously published data. Need support generally was higher in exploration than self-control. Relationships with the “yesterday” condition were similar to earlier findings on hopes versus duties. The differences in each type of need support between exploration and hopes, and between self-control and duties, were small. This research shows what could be typical need-support differences in episodes of promotion and prevention focus.

In research exploring regulatory focus, promotion and prevention have often been operationalized as hopes and duties, respectively. More recently, research has begun to use exploration and self-control instead. The current research analyzed the differences in language used for promotion- and prevention-focused experiences, focusing on duties versus self-control, and hopes versus exploration. I examined the 81 categories of words that Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count provided, focusing on differences in word categories that are used at least 0.5% of the time. Consistent with expectations, descriptions of self-control included more words related to food, exercise, and emotions than descriptions of duties. As expected, descriptions of hopes included more words related to work and achievement than descriptions of exploration. Counter to predictions, exploration did not involve more words in the ingestion, leisure, or motion categories. Similarly, self-control did not involve more words related to sex or money. This research suggests that different operational definitions of regulatory focus could be appropriate to somewhat different domains of activity.

Numerous major holidays celebrate socially gathering in person. However, in major holidays that happened during the pandemic, desires to nurture relationships and maintain holiday traditions often conflicted with physical distancing and other measures to protect against COVID-19. The current research sought to understand wellbeing during American Thanksgiving in 2020, which happened 8months into the COVID-19 pandemic, after months of physical distancing and stay-at-home orders. American Thanksgiving is a major holiday not limited to any religion. We asked 404 American adults how they spent Thanksgiving Day and to report on their experiences of that day. Predictors of wellbeing that we drew from self-determination theory were satisfaction of the fundamental needs for social connection (relatedness), for doing what one really wants (autonomy), and feeling effective (competence). The predictors of wellbeing that we drew from regulatory focus theory were a focus on growth (promotion), and a focus on security (prevention). We found that feeling socially connected and focusing on growth related most strongly to wellbeing. Additionally, participants who saw even one other person face-to-face reported significantly higher relatedness satisfaction, promotion focus, and wellbeing than those who did not. Our research could help construct persuasive messages that encourage nurturing close relationships at major holidays while remaining safe against the virus.

This research shows that Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015 can identify important aspects of self-control and suggests that lay people inaccurately may believe that prevention focus is more useful for self-control than promotion focus is. We analyzed descriptions of self-control (N = 362) and compared them with descriptions of pursuing hopes or duties (N = 1048). Descriptions of self-control frequently mentioned common temptations and aspects of (meta)cognitive processes. They also showed evidence of extremely high authenticity, which may be crucial for successful self-control. Additionally, analyses of word categories and self-reported need satisfaction in the experiences participants described showed more and larger differences between self-control and pursuing hopes (promotion) than between self-control and pursuing duties (prevention). We discuss directions for future research about the role of authenticity in effective self-control and whether, when, and how being in a prevention focus (vs. promotion focus) is more effective for engaging in self-control.

Numerous major holidays celebrate socially gathering in person. However, in major holidays that happened during the pandemic, desires to nurture relationships and maintain holiday traditions often conflicted with physical distancing and other measures to protect against COVID-19. The current research sought to understand well-being during American Thanksgiving in 2020, which happened eight months into the COVID-19 pandemic, after months of physical distancing and stay-at-home orders. American Thanksgiving is a major holiday not limited to any religion. We asked 404 American adults how they spent Thanksgiving Day and to report on their experiences of that day. Predictors of well-being that we drew from self-determination theory were satisfaction of the fundamental needs for social connection (relatedness), for doing what one really wants (autonomy), and for feeling effective (competence). The predictors of well-being that we drew from regulatory focus theory were a focus on growth (promotion), and a focus on security (prevention). We found that feeling socially connected and focusing on growth related most strongly to well-being. Additionally, participants who saw even one other person face-to-face reported significantly higher relatedness satisfaction, promotion focus, and well-being than those who did not. Our research could help construct persuasive messages that encourage nurturing close relationships at major holidays while remaining safe against the virus.