Need Support and Regulatory Focus in Responding to COVID-19

Prevention focus is a self-regulatory orientation that serves the need for security, and promotion focus is a self-regulatory orientation serves the need for growth. From mid-March to early April 2020, did people judge prevention focus to be more useful than promotion focus for responding to COVID-19? Our study tested this hypothesis with 401 American and Canadian participants, who we sampled in 100-person waves in the first four Thursdays of the pandemic. For this study, we developed a new measure of the judged usefulness of promotion and prevention focus. Results supported this hypothesis. Additionally, results showed that the judged usefulness of promotion and prevention focus related positively to support of the psychological needs for autonomy and relatedness, respectively, in responding to COVID-19. Day-to-day differences in autonomy, competence, and relatedness support and in promotion and prevention focus suggest that people were remarkably resilient in the early weeks of the pandemic. Our research could be useful for crafting persuasive advocacy and narrative communications that encourage social distancing to protect others about whom people care most.