18th European Congress of Psychology, Brighton, England, 3 - 06 July 2023, pp.228
Regulatory Focus Theory (Higgins, 1997) asserts that individuals try to achieve pleasure and avoid pain and
use different strategies in doing so. These strategies are in two types: promotion focus and prevention
focus. Promotion focus is related to the ideal self and the desire to achieve positive results, and the
individual's need for progress whereas prevention focus is related to the fulfilment of responsibilities or
obligations and regulates safety needs by avoiding negative consequences and losses. According to the
Regulatory Fit Theory, the fit between self-regulation focus and environmental demands can affect
people's attitudes or performance. For instance, promotion tasks require enthusiasm and creativity;
prevention tasks may require vigilance and attention to detail. Thus, people would show better motivation
or performance in the fields where there is a fit between self and context. Past studies have revealed that
this fit affects motivation or performance, and the task type would be a predictor of the situational
regulatory focus. However, there is a gap in the literature about the effects of this mechanism on
motivation in the leadership fields. Fit between cognitive orientation and the context may affect
leadership attitudes and behaviours. We expect that task type would moderate the relationship between
chronic self-regulatory focus and leadership motivation. Specifically, promotion-focused people would be
motivated for the leadership role in promotion tasks rather than prevention tasks, whereas preventionfocused people would be motivated in prevention tasks rather than promotion tasks. We plan to conduct
the study in a sample of university students in the spring of 2023 and analyse moderating effects using
PROCESS Macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). The potential findings of the study may contribute to Regulatory
Fit Theory in the context of leadership and practices for job designs to increase person-job fit in
organizations.