Contents of Hopes and Duties: A Linguistic Analysis

Abstract

People in a prevention focus tend to view their goals as duties and obligations, whereas people in a promotion focus tend to view their goals as hopes and aspirations. The current research suggests that people's attention goes to somewhat different experiences when they describe their hopes vs. duties. Two studies randomly assigned participants (N = 953) to describe a hope vs. duty. Specifically, Study 1 asked participants to describe a personal experience of pursuing a hope vs. duty, and Study 2 asked participants to describe a current hope vs. duty they had. I analyzed these descriptions with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) 2015. Consistent with earlier research on regulatory focus, participants wrote more about positive outcomes when describing hopes and social relationships when describing duties. The current research suggests that the effectiveness of common regulatory focus and regulatory fit manipulations could depend on participants' freedom to choose the experiences they bring to mind when they describe their hopes and duties.

Distinguishing between Need Support and Regulatory Focus with LIWC

“…Vaughn (2017a) describes these data sets in detail. The study labeled Vaughn (2018) in the current research is a published LIWC analysis of participants' descriptions of pursuing hopes and duties from Vaughn's (2017b) Studies 1a-1c. The current Study 1b and Study 2 are previously unpublished.…”

“…For ease of comparing the results of the current Studies 1a and Vaughn (2018) with the same studies in the earlier research, I used exactly the same participants. Therefore, the exclusion criteria I used in the earlier research were the same ones I used the current Study 1b and Study 2.…”

“…These studies examined descriptions of pursuing hopes versus duties. The current Study 2 is previously unpublished, and the study called Vaughn (2018) in the current research is Vaughn's (2018) Study 1. I expected the results from Vaughn's (2018) LIWC analyses to replicate in Study 2.…”

“…The current Study 2 is previously unpublished, and the study called Vaughn (2018) in the current research is Vaughn's (2018) Study 1. I expected the results from Vaughn's (2018) LIWC analyses to replicate in Study 2. For example, I expected descriptions of hopes to be more positive in tone and descriptions of duties to indicate more attention to social relationships.…”

“…In Study 2 and Vaughn (2018), the first page of stimulus materials was titled "A Personal Experience." This page randomly assigned participants to write about either a promotion-focused experience ("You were doing what you ideally wanted to, in order to fulfill a hope or aspiration you had") or a prevention-focused experience ("You were doing what you believed you ought to, in order to fulfill a duty or obligation you had").…”