The Effects Of The Framing Type,The Regulatory Focus And Psychological Distance On Risky Decision-making Preference Of College Students

Risky decision-making is influenced by many factors,researches showed that the individual’s risky decision-making preference is not always fixed under different framing types.With the deepening of research,some scholars have proposed that the risky decision-making preference of individuals under different framing types is not invariable,the external factors and internal differences of individuals need to be considered together.On the one hand,facing with situation whether of gain or loss,people always make decisions based on some kind of motivation.as a new emerging in the field of motivation theory,the regulatory focus theory offers a new perspective to study how the individuals achieve their needs,expectations and goals from many aspects.On the other hand,studies have found that the psychological distance can also affect individuals’ risky decision-making preferences,construal level theory explained that people tend to use the form of abstract and general processing in far psychological distance,use the form of concrete and local processing in near psychological distance,individual’s cognitive style and processing level to the event will affect the stability of people’s risky decision-making preference under different framing types.Based on the framing effect,under the construal level theory and the regulatory focus theory,from the cognition aspect and motivation aspect to construct the influencing factors of risky decision-making model under different framing type,examines motivation and cognitive representation under "gain framing type " and "loss framing type " on the risky decision-making.According to the literature review,individuals’ regulatory focus types can affect the risky decision-making preference under different frame types,but the specific performance of the impact is still controversial.Therefore,the first study discusses the impact of regulatory focus types and frame types on risky decision-making preference.The research’s objects are 240 college students,using 2(the regulatory focus: promotion focus,prevention focus)x 2(the framing type: gain framing type,loss framing type)design,use the regulatory focus questionnaire to measure participants regulatory focus characteristics,with the risky decision-making situation questionnaire survey participants under different framing type of risky decision-making preferences.Based on the results the next study include another variables: psychological distance,as an important factor to influence the cognitive level of processing,to explore the framing types and regulatory focus under the two dimensions of psychological distance on the effects of risky decision-making preference.study 1 use 2(regulatory focus: promotion focus,prevention focus)x 2(framing type: gain framing type,loss framing type)x 2(temporal distance: diatant temporal distance,near temporal distance).By referring to the time distance imagination experiment proposed by Libennan,138 subjects’ perception of different time distances was started through different psychological distance tasks to test the difference of subjects’ risky decision-making preference.study 2 adopts the same research design as study 1.The social distance is used IOS scale to launch different social distances of 118 subjects,and the influence of different social distances on risky decision-making is tested.The following results are obtained through ANOVA analysis:(1)The regulatory focus and framing types have an effect on risky decision-making.Under the gain framing type,promotion focus individuals is more risky than prevention focus individuals;Under the loss framing type,preventing focus individuals is more risky than promoting focus individuals.(2)Temporal distance and social distance will increase individuals’ risk seeking preference when making decisions.(3)Temporal distance has an interactive effect with the framing type.Under the diatant temporal distance,individuals’ risky preference under the loss framing is significantly higher than that under the gain framing type,but this difference is not significant under the near temporal distance.(4)Social distance has an interactive effect with the framing type.It is concluded that under the framing type,individuals prefer risk-taking in the case of further social distance compared with nearer social distance.Under the framing type of loss,the difference of risky decision-making preference caused by social distance is not significant.There is also an interaction between the social distance and the regulatory focus.In the case of nearer social distance,the prevention focus individuals are more preferred than the promotion focus individuals of the risky decision-making.In the case of further social distance,promotion focus individuals prefers risk than preventing focus individuals.(5)The interaction between psychological distance and framing type and the regulatory focus also show a interactive effect.Based on the above research results,the following conclusions can be drawn :(1)Risky decision-making is a complex process,and the framing type of gain or loss,the regulatory focus of promotion or prevention,and the psychological distance between near and distant will all affect the individual’s risky decision-making preference in different ways;(2)The matching of the framing type and the regulatory focus type will make individuals experience "feeling right" for their own behaviors,and thus be more firm of the decision they made.It is shown that under the gain framing type,promoting focus individuals takes more risk than preventing focus targeted individuals.In the framing type of loss,preventing focus individuals is more risky than promoting focus individuals.(3)Psychological distance will change people’s cognitive processing methods.With the decrease of psychological distance,people will use more cognitive resources to process information more specifically,which will reduce the negative impact of different frame effects on people.