Author ' s personal copy Research Dialogue The function of value in self-regulation ☆

This commentary argues for a functional perspective of the value–engagement relationship, proposing that evaluation determines engagement. I compare this causal direction—from value to engagement—to regulatory engagement theory, which proposes that engagement determines evaluation. I demonstrate the functional view in self-control research, which finds that people overcome obstacles for goal pursuit, including low probabilities of success, by increasing the value of adhering to an overriding goal. I further suggest that whereas both causal directions—from value to engagement and from engagement to value—are theoretically plausible, empirical studies should provide better ways to distinguish between these conceptually different underlying models. © 2009 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Regulatory engagement theory's (Higgins, 2006) basic premise is that the strength of engagement or involvement in goal pursuit influences the extremity of value estimates. In their target article, Higgins and Scholer (2009) apply this principle to the process of value creation. They demonstrate that through increased involvement in pursuing a goal, marketers can increase a person's strength of attraction to positive objects as well as her strength of repulsion to negative objects. Higgins and Scholer further state three factors that increase engagement: (a) posing obstacles, (b) making an outcome more likely, and (c) increasing regulatory fit. Each of these factors influences the extremity of value judgments by increasing people's involvement in a task. Higgins and Scholer's model is rich and thought provoking and raises many important points of which I chose to address only one, namely, the causal direction of the value–engagement relationship. Whereas in Higgins and Scholer's model, value is the outcome of engagement, I explore an alternative model, which refers to value as the cause of engagement. These two pathways may not be mutually exclusive and likely there are circumstances in which each operates. However by comparing these alternative models I can critically discuss existing findings and examine when each conceptual model provides a better match to the existing evidence. Specifically, according to regulatory engagement theory, several factors influence engagement, which then influences value. Below is an illustration of the causal direction: • Obstacles/High-Likelihoods/Fit→ Engagement→ Evaluation According to the alternative model, these same factors increase value, which then acts to increase engagement, thus, the causal direction is as follows: • Obstacles/High-Likelihoods/Fit→ Evaluation→ Engagement Value estimates can thus play an instrumental role inmotivating action. This (alternative) perspective can complement regulatory engagement theory but should nonetheless be clearly distinguished from it since it proposes a different process of value creation. The advantage of an instrumental perspective is that it describes the function of value. In this alternative view, changes in valuation can help people prepare to act, particularly when they anticipate obstacles or self-control problems in adhering to their goals. Consistent with the assumption that value is instrumental in causing engagement, research on implicit evaluations documents how liking for a goal often acts as a self-regulatory device designed to increase goal adherence (Ferguson & Bargh, 2004; Markman & Brendl, 2000). According to this research, the basic function of value is to cue action toward (or away from) goal states. Specifically, individuals approach positively valued goal states and avoid negatively valued goal states, and their Available online at www.sciencedirect. com Journal of Consumer Psychology 19 (2009) 129–133 Journal of CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY ☆ An invited commentary for Journal of Consumer Psychology. ⁎ Fax: +1 773 753 0556. E-mail address: ayelet.fishbach@ChicagoBooth.edu. 1057-7408/$ see front matter © 2009 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jcps. 2009.02. 005 Author's personal copy evaluations direct their actions. As an example of the function of value, Custers and Aarts (2005) find that implicitly associating activities, such as solving puzzles, with positive (versus neutral or negative) affective evaluations increases people's desire to engage in these activities. Value in this line ofwork is a cue to get involved in goal-related activity; when it is positive, engagement increases and when it is negative engagement decreases. This view of value is conceptually different from the one regulatory engagement theory proposes (Higgins, 2006). This theory poses a similar causal direction as what early work on dissonance (Festinger, 1957) suggested: from action to evaluation. According to these (otherwise quite distinct) perspectives value is an outcome rather than a cause. In other words, in contrast to the research on “liking is for doing,” in regulatory engagement theory, “doing is for liking;” hence, the direction of the causal effect is reversed. When value is the cause (“liking is for doing”), it is the mechanism by which goals motivate action, but when value is an outcome (“doing is for liking”), value has no further role in motivating action (though it may nevertheless influence actions that follows). Moreover, if value causes engagement, people may actively bolster or undermine the value of certain goal states in order to influence their motivation toward and away from these states. That is, evaluation can serve as a self-control function. In what follows, I elaborate on this assumption. I suggest that value can be functional, that it motivates engagement, and, in particular, that it prepares individuals to act when they face a self-control problem. I apply this analysis of the function of evaluation to (a) the effects of obstacles and (b) the experienced likelihood of attainment, and I suggest that the observed relationships between obstacles and value and between likelihoods and value can often reflect the selfcontrol function of value in motivating action. Thus, the increase in value of approached states and the decrease in value of avoided states prepare the self-regulatory system to act when obstacles are anticipated or when likelihoods signal a need to act. Overcoming obstacles Higgins and Scholer first demonstrate the link between engagement and value by exploring how obstacles or challenges influence evaluation. Regulatory engagement theory posits that because obstacles require an increase in engagement, they increase the extremity of value judgments. That is, the direction of causality is from perceived obstacles to increased engagement, which in turn leads to more extreme evaluation: • Perceived obstacles→ Engagement→ Evaluation An alternative way to view the obstacle–value link would assume that the increase in the subjective value of a goal state helps people adhere to this goal in the face of an obstacle. That is, obstacles increase value, which in turn increases engagement: • Perceived obstacles→ Evaluation→ Engagement In light of Higgins and Scholer's “engagement to value” link, what is the evidence for the “value to engagement” link? One source of support for the “value to engagement” link comes from research on self-control, which documents changes in evaluation as an instrumental self-control response directed at motivating action. Self-control problems arise when people need to overcome immediate obstacles in order to adhere to important, long-term goals that offer delayed benefits (Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994; Fishbach, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2003; Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989). For example, keeping a job may require getting up early, staying in shape requires following an exercising regime, and successful relationships require not having extramarital affairs. The obstacles that individuals need to overcome can be part of executing the activity (e.g., it is difficult to study) or are posed by temptations that offer short-term benefits (e.g., it is difficult to study when one's favorite television show is on). In response to these obstacles, people exercise self-control. Specifically, according to counteractive control theory, people overcome obstacles by increasing the subjective value of goal states relative to the value of giving in to temptations (Fishbach & Converse, in press; Fishbach & Trope, 2005; Myrseth, Fishbach, & Trope, 2009; Trope & Fishbach, 2000). This instrumental self-control process involves asymmetric changes in value. When people anticipate a self-control problem, they increase the motivational strength of adhering to a goal by boosting the value of goal actions and dampening the value of temptations. Thus, although the presence of obstacles directly decreases the likelihood of adhering to goals, indirectly, it triggers the operation of self-control, which acts to increase the likelihood of adhering to the goal. These direct and indirect influences cancel out each other, such that self-control operations counteract the effect obstacles have on the likelihood of meeting one's long-term goals. As an example of changes in valuation as a self-control strategy, Fishbach and Trope (2005) offered participants the opportunity to take a diagnostic test of their reading skills, and they assessed the participants' evaluation of the test before taking the test or even committing themselves to taking it. Fishbach and Trope manipulated the expected obstacle of taking the test by describing it as either boring or interesting. They found that participants evaluated the boring test more positively than the interesting test—an evaluative pattern that serves to motivate one to take the test. Importantly, this pattern was reversed in the presence of social monitoring. When participants worked under supervision, they evaluated the boring test less favorably than the interesting one. When extern