Securing foundations and advancing frontiers: Prevention and promotion effects on judgment & decision making

•This paper reviews regulatory focus theory and its contributions to decision making and judgment.•It begins with a brief summary of the most representative original articles written on the topic.•Since these original articles, the history of research contributions on this topic are discussed.•Recent research on the utility of the promotion-prevention distinction is discussed.•Potential limitations and avenues for future research are discussed.

Over the past two decades, research testing regulatory focus theory has made multiple contributions to understanding better many different psychological issues. In this article, we detail the foundations of regulatory focus theory, its wide-ranging impact, and its implications in particular for understanding the motivational underpinnings of judgment and decision making. We then explore new developments regarding the interactions between regulatory focus and the psychological experience of being above or below the status quo, and note how this research helps to further distinguish regulatory focus from more general models of approach-avoidance. We then close with a discussion of new research on the relation among regulatory focus, politics, and culture, and between regulatory focus and ethics-both of which may be of special interest to organizational psychologists and decision scientists.