Better regulatory performance without greater cognitive resource expenditure: The effect of motivational states on self-regulation

Although studies have shown better self-regulation for participants in promotion versus prevention-focused states, there remains debate as to whether better regulatory performance requires more cognitive resources. In this study, participants performed a colour-word Stroop task in different motivational states and reported their cognitive effort in Experiment 1, and engaged in a subsequent spatial-word Stroop task to measure their ego depletion in Experiment 2. Results showed that participants in promotion focus neither reported more cognitive effort in Experiment 1 nor suffered worse ego depletion in Experiment 2 than participants in prevention focus. Additionally, the two experiments consistently showed better self-regulation in promotion than prevention focus with no difference in interference effects. This study suggested that self-regulation execution was more effective in promotion than prevention-focused states without greater cognitive resource expenditure, and that increased capacity for conflict identification rather than conflict resolution could account for our findings.