Motivation Is a Central Principle

¶ … motivation is a central principle within the science of psychology. When people fail and succeed, especially in the workplace, their tendencies and actions give a clear description of their personality and character. Some people fail and give up on their attempts, taking the perspective that is always easier to prevent themselves from failure again rather than keep trying. While conversely, others may fail and try harder, motivating themselves to succeed through failures. Both of these types of feedback signs are found in empirical studies, however, little application has been found in how to use this data in interpreting workplace relationships and the motivational tactics of management.

This specific study looks into the distinction between promotion vs. prevention focused individuals, and how motivational tactics within these two character types can work together or separately. It is necessary in the workplace environment to find a focus on broad perspectives in which a unique assessment of promotion vs. prevention characterization is derived within the workplace environment.

Fundamentally the distinction between advancement (prevention) focused and security (prevention) focused individuals takes place within how they interact on both a physical and social level. When considering needs, certain individuals are much more concerned with how much nourishment, growth and development they experience, while others concern themselves more with shelter, safety and protection. E.T. Higgens advanced the theory that prevention vs. promotion focused individuals not only concern themselves with differing sets of values and emphasis, motivations for advancement and security also can created "different modes of goal pursuit." In specific, that people "represent and experience basic needs for advancement in an entirely different fashion than basic needs for security." This revolutionary theory, has dramatic application to the workplace. Managers who differ in motivational mindset from employees, could have conflicting value standards that dramatically decreases their effectiveness in motivating production and positive work environment.

Within the workplace environment, the connection between employees and employers is extremely important to sustain productivity and workplace culture. Many times however, a breakdown in communication can be caused by uncontrollable incompatibility between management style and employee behavior. To attribute this incongruity to a conflict between promotion vs. prevention motivation might be too ambitious, however, further research needs to be demonstrate a direct link between these two factors. The purpose of this particular study is to find out what influence does having opposing personality styles (promotion focused vs. prevention focused) have, on productivity and movitation in the workplace. In addition, the actual negative impact on promotion focused employees if they work within a prevention focused management environment, and vice versa. First however, we need to define a more concrete understanding of promotion vs. prevention personality types.

Prevention vs. Promotion: The Research

Higgins proposed in groundbreaking research that the two basic self-regulation systems individuals have are grounded in the prevention vs. promotion conflict. The first system, security (prevention) focused, regulates how individuals avoid punishment. While, in contrast, the second system regulates the achievement of rewards and focuses people on promotion goal. Although this theory is not distinctly revolutionary (having been proposed by many prominent psychologists in the early 1960s), it does present a much clearer and unified definition of the prevention vs. promotion personality system. Higgins argued that when people are under a prevention focus, they are sensitive to punishments that may result from poor performance. In contrast when people are under a promotion focus they become greatly sensitive to the rewards that may be gained from having better performance. Thus, the specific fit between the regulation focus and outcome is ultimately what determines motivation. Higgins forwards the idea of "congruency" as the primary method to determine between character types. Idea of congruency states that the prevention system becomes active when actions are recognized to have negative outcoes, because such outcomes are congruent with the individual's purpose, which is the avoidance of punishment. Thus, the promotion focused individual becomes active when actions will result in achieving their specific focus which is to approach rewards. This theory was thoroughly tested by Higgins, where he notes that when individual think about gaining money, the motivation level was strongly positively correlated within the promotion focus and negatively correlated with prevention focus. When the test was reversed to focus on losing money however, respondents showed that they were their was a negative correlation with promotion focused individuals, and positive correlation with prevention focused individuals. The conclusion of Higgin's research is that motivation that is found when there is congruence between "regulation focus and outcome saliency is higher than the motivation found when their incongruence between these factors."

In more layman terms, when pursuing promotion concerns, people are focused much more on gains. They view themselves as individual striving towards positive outcomes and avoiding the absence of such outcomes. In the application of such theory across genres, promotion focused individuals improve their relations with others through representative goals such as strengthening social connections and avoiding missed social opportunities. Whereas withina prevention focused system, individuals would attempt to protect their relations woth others by eliminating actions and events that might threaten their established social connections and the strong avoidance of social exclusion. The extent of how deeply promotion vs. prevention systems is ingrained in individual personality can be related to the emotions associated with such personality types. Gains are experiences as the result of positive outcomes, thus promotion focused individuals strive to achieve the pleasurable state of elation and cheerfulness. Whereas prevention focused individual strive to achieve the state of "non-loss," therefore their highest emotional status may be the pleasurable absence, such as relaxation and general quiescence.

The effects of a contrast in two mindsets induce differences in how individuals perceive pleasure and pain, but they also effect how individuals enjoy the intensity of pleasure vs. pain. Promotion focused individuals strive for elation, and as a result they are involved in consistently high motivational arousal. Prevention focused systems tend to provoke less intensive positive feelings. Thus promotion focused individuals tend to be feel more intensely than the calmness of people who able to focus solely on prevention. However, the evident tradeoff is that low motivational arousal entails that failures also have a dramtically reduced affect on prevention focused individuals, because they tend to put themselves in positions of emotional and physical security. Whereas those who are highly aroused emotionally, feels a much harder emotional impact from failure. Thus promotion focused individuals amplify both their pleasure and pain in a variety of spectrums.

The application of promotion vs. prevention research however, does not explicitly mean that such personality systems reflect desired positive or negative endstates. It is much more a broad application of how general desires can approach either approaching positives or avoiding negatives. The classic example forwarded by Higgins within the context of employee motivation is a situation of two employees working for a corporation. Both employees are highly motivated to work more than the standard forty hours a week, in order to gain a promotion at the end of the calendar year. Both of these individuals are striving towards a positive endstate. However, for the first employee who has a promotion focused mindset, working overtime in order to earn a promotion is the next step towards improving his status within the corporation and help his career. Whereas the second employee views his overtime and subsequent promotion as a necessary action to protect his status within the corporation and to keep up with his fellow employees. Thus although both employees have the same endstate in mind, how they approach these motivations from a general personality system is invoked in their thought pattern, not in their ultimate outcome. The ambiguity that arises from simple assumptions of promotion vs. prevention mindsets can arise from merely assessing outcomes. Simple comparisons are made between established desires to either approach certain gains or avoidance certain losses. Researchers testing hypotehesies tied to the problem of motivation for promotion and prevention often make the mistake of using ambiguous endstates that can be applied to both personality systems.

Although there is a significant difference derived from promotion vs. prevention motivation systems, one question that comes to mind is what causal factors determine when each of these motivations become active. If individuals have within them both advancement and security needs, then it merits dissection of how each need becomes active. Higgins conducted further study into this question in 2000, because promotion vs. prevention focuses are associated with very distinct representations and experiences, and the situations that evoke them. When individuals goals involve gains incentives, pursuit of such goals tend to be promotion motivated. Wheras, goals that involve loss incentives will be prevention motivated. Still no clear method can be used to test how such needs will be specifically activated within individuals, this decision is very much one that is influenced by self-standards. Self-standards that involves terms fo gaining or not gaining positive outcomes will inevitably lead to promotion focus, whereas the same can be said for prevention focus. Duty and obligation for instance are viewed through self-standards as naturally security based, and induce prevention focused mentality and motivation.

Overall it is evident from this discussion that the prevention vs. promotion focus has an important affect on how individuals act and interact with each other. The above discussion looked at the general application of such systems reflect individual behavior, however, a much more specific look at the effects of such actions within the workplace must be reviewed before a test study can be conducted to answer our hypothesis.

Promotion vs. Prevention: Application within the Workplace

The full implication of promotion vs. prevention focused mentalities is on the explicit strategy decisions individuals make within this framework. The impact on strategy decisions within employee-employer relations is extremely important. In this section, we will look at how strategy decisions are different between promotion and prevention mindsets.

One area that has specific application to workplace environment is the consideration of alternatives and new ideas. Promotion focused individuals tend to be much more eager and accepting of alternatives. Under this mindset individuals are much more open to many possibilities and thereby set lower thresholds for accepting possibly important and relevant information. Thus, using such a strategy, an individual can have a significantly better change of identifying correct methodologies and avoid the error of omission in decision making. For management who take this strategy, risk taking is a significant part of the decision making matrix. Which means that management wants individuals to endorse a method that "might" be correct, and risk being wrong, rather than not forwarding a method and miss the opportunity to succeed. In contrast, management that takes the prevention focused strategy will look at alternatives through a vary narrowly defined window. Which means that they have a very strict criteria for acceptance and a higher threshold for potentially relevant information. This strategy can be taken by management in order to increase the chance of rejecting incorrect decisions, and avoiding risky commitments that cause severe losses. The obvious conflict that could arise within this instance is if employees and employers use contrasting strategies within the workplace. The tension that is inevitable could result in the breakdown of relationships between the two parties. Recent research conducted by Molden and Higgins in 2004 demonstrated that individuals with promotion focus tend to endorse more explanation for their performance than those with prevention concerns, and as a result form less certain impressions than those with prevention concerns as well. The tension that results when these two systems come in conflict can result in psychological stress and general reduction in workplace productivity.

Another important problem that arises within conflicting systems in the workplace is there effect on insight and creative thought. Management with a promotion focus generally tend to facilitate an exploratory approach to boost creativity. Whereas prevention focused management would narrowly consider alternatives and have a general inhibition for creativity. This management style difference is not necessarily wrong however. Those with a very strict method to achieve corporate goals tend to be more efficient, because less time is wasted on exploring ideas that become irrelevant later. Little research has been done into whether working within a prevention strategy management system are more or less satisfied.

In general promotion or prevention motivators cause people to behave and think differently about the consequences of their actions. People overestimate the probability of conjunctive events when they have a promotion focused mindset. This is because positivity in relations to business methods may result in people believeing that the likelihood of any one individual event would correlate in their joint occurrence. In contrast prevention focused people tend to take all possible steps to ensure that all necessary staeps have been taken to eliminate the possibility of loses, which means that prevention focused individuals have a much better grasp of how events can fit together.

In general it is evident that the prevention vs. promotion model within the workplace can cause tension, and that either management style has their individual strengths and weaknesses. The key question that needs to be answered in this study however, is how conflict between employee-employers can occur when they have different systems emphasizing prevention and promotion. The next step will be a methodical research study on this subject.

Promotion vs. Prevention within the Workplace: Test

In order to accurately test the relationship between such circumstances, the best applied methodology would be use psychological methods to induce both employees and employers to place themselves within promotion vs. prevention frameworks and measure their responsivesness. Care however must be taken to ensure that the measurements focus on only a single common endstate rather than a general one that could be applied through both mindsets.

To conduct this test the most important factor to consider is how to isolate corporate strategies that side with either the promotion or prevention strategy focus. In order to be the most accurate, this study will filter companies within two industries: investment banking and internet technology. In the first industry, general corporate focus is conservative in nature, and asset management strategies generally favor prevention focused. This is because wealth attainment and accruement is reflected through compound gains through years of investing rather than instantaneous wealth. By selecting from the investment banking corporations to study management behavior, we will select 200 managers from highly respected and prevention strategy-based corporations. Conversely the technology sector will be significantly focused on individuals who act in a manner conducive to promotion strategy, because taking risks and intensive innovation is the key strategy towards success. Managers and employees taken from this sector would be significantly more promotion focused than prevention focused.

The next step is to induce individuals from these two environments to think within circumstances and articulate their thought process. Managers from the investment banking sector will be asked to consider how they would react to suggestions from employees to take a highly risky position and to explore investment opportunities in a very unpredictable environments and industries. At the same time, they will also be induced to think about an environment where employees work within the framework of already popular or common trends to create "safe investments" and to judge the merits of such actions. At the same time, employees from the investment banking industry will be asked to place themselves within a situation where management created a tiered system of earnings, where high profit quotas result in fast promotion and career advancement, and mediocre quotas result in less but steady advancement. Similarly they will be asked about a work environment where corporate advancement is only performed through cyclical reviews and not based on performance at all. Individuals within the high technology sector will be asked a similar set of questions relating to the above standard. The purpose would be establish a correlation between how these individuals behave and to identify them as either promotion focused and prevention focused individuals. Once managers and employees provide responses to these scenarios, detailed descriptions and mapping of their thought process will begin. The fundamental question that they will have to answer is whether or not working within such a system would induce, conflict, stress, and eroding of relationships. The thought process mapping would only occur, after we can determine whether these individuals are promotion or prevention focused. Thus, we can monitor and record how their actions can be reflected across the scenarios established within this debate.

Results:

The results of this study shows that there is a strong correlation towards both conflict and unity when conflicts between promotion and prevention occur. Date shows that the effects on employee-employer relations may very well be much more impacted from the employee perspective rather than the employer perspective. Employees who are promotion focused that encounter a prevention focused management, are extremely frustrated because goal achievement does not reflect rewards. Several factors appear to come into play, first employees feel that they have less of an ability to work independently and that supervision is much stricter. Second, they perceive a rise of hostility between themselves and managers because they are restricted in their ability to assess situations. However, employees with promotion focus in such a circumstance does not feel demotivation to work less or decrease their productivity. The converse is true because they must expand more energy to apply management specific directives into action rather than pursue their independent vision. When prevention focused employees confront promotion focused employers, they feel a much greater burden to excel within the framework of they are provided. They feel greater tension with management because they are forced to think within a unstructured system, and feel that management demands greatly exceed what should be expected of them. However, in terms of production and motivation, they also do not feel a severe lack of either concentration because they are significantly more motivated to retain their employment and be within the good graces of management. However, the effect on management appears to be minimal in that they perceive employees with both promotion and prevention focused mentalities as hard workers and highly productive. They appear to have no tension towards those with conflicting systems because their overall productivity tends to remain at a high level.

A strong correlation between stress and promotion vs. prevention mentality conflicts is evident. However, this does not conclusively mean that both sides feel that there is no way to manage or solve such a structured difference. In fact, the study shows that individuals tend to translate themselves towards management motivation whether prevention or promotion focused, because they want to be on the same motivational plane as their employers. Stress however does occur when there is a conflict between these two roles because employees feel that they have less substantive control of their situation. For promotion focused employees, this means that they feel a stifling of their creativity and general independence. For prevention focused individuals it means that they have consistent stress as a result of attempting to work within an established system and meet the expectations of dynamic change and innovation from a management that demands promotion focused goals. This stress appears to be unavoidable because it is the result of two conflicting thought processes. However, it does not show that employees suffering from stress decrease their productivity or motivation level, because they all have the same reflected end state goals.