Creation and validation of the Chinese regulatory focus in relationships scale across multiple relationships context

WeiWei Li; XiaoQi He; Yun Wang; XiHua Zeng

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1003235

Creation and validation of the Chinese regulatory focus in relationships scale across multiple relationships context

Front Psychol. 2022 Dec 8:13:1003235. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1003235. eCollection 2022.

Authors

WeiWei Li¹, XiaoQi He², Yun Wang³, XiHua Zeng²

Affiliations

¹ Guangdong University of Education, Guangzhou, China.
² Department of Psychology, School of Public Health (Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Tropical Disease Research), Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

Abstract

A regulatory focus in relationships motivates individuals to be concerned about the presence/absence of positives (promotion focus)/negatives (prevention focus) in social interactions. How to capture the regulatory focus in relationships remains unclear. Based on regulatory focus theory, we created a regulatory focus in relationships scale (RFRS) with a sample of Chinese undergraduates. The RFRS included four subscales of interpersonal relationships (parent-child, teacher-student, friend, classmate), each of which consists of a model of promotion-prevention focus. With a series of interviews and tests, we found that the RFRS had acceptable validation and reliability. And promotion-prevention focus in relationships is context-dependent: Chinese undergraduates hold high promotion and low prevention focus for parents, friends, and classmates, while they hold high prevention focus and low promotion focus for teachers. The regulatory focus in relationships newly created can be used for future studies to test relational motivation in the specific interpersonal context.

Keywords: Chinese relationship model; prevention focus; promotion focus; regulatory focus in relationships; relationships; undergraduates.