On the relationship between regulatory focus and response bias in multiple-choice exams

Abstract

Regulatory focus is a strong predictor for a person’s behaviour in signal detection tasks. While a promotion focus is related to a risky response strategy (hits, false alarms), a prevention focus is associated with a conservative strategy (correct rejections, misses). The present research is based on the assumption that multiple-choice (MC) examinations represent typical signal-detection situations. It includes six studies that examined the effect of students’ regulatory focus on their test-taking response bias in MC items with a multiple true–false format. Altogether, the results support the hypothesized association between promotion focus and the tendency to make errors of commissions (rather than omissions), and conditioned evidence for the hypothesized association between promotion focus and the tendency to confirm (rather than negate) test items. Findings concerning prevention focus were heterogeneous. In sum, this research extends the generalizability of the predictions from regulatory focus theory to the context of MC examinations.