If we have the will, there will be a way:: Regulatory focus as a group identity

Based oil social identity theory and regulatory focus theory, we predicted that promotion and prevention strategies call be part of the identity of a group (i.e., collective regulatory focus) which in turn influences the behavior and experienced emotions of individual group members. We conducted two experiments to test this prediction. After assessing participants personal regulator); focus preference, collective regulatory focus vas induced by showing participants group mottos, allegedly chosen by other members of their group, that either voiced a promotion. on or a prevention strategy preference. Both experiments yielded evidence for our prediction in that the collective regulatory focus shifted the behavior of individual group members oil a signal detection task towards promotion-(liberal bias) or prevention- (conservative bias) consistent behavior and influenced the emotions they experienced. Experiment 2 further substantiated our group identity rationale by showing that these effects were especially strong for high identifiers. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.