Speed/accuracy decisions in task performance: Built-in trade-off or separate strategic concerns?

Abstract

In four studies we show that participants’ regulatory focus influences speed/accuracy decisions in different tasks. According to regulatory focus theory ( Higgins, 1997), promotion focus concerns with accomplishments and aspirations produce strategic eagerness whereas prevention focus concerns with safety and responsibilities produce strategic vigilance. Studies 1–3 show faster performance and less accuracy in simple drawing tasks for participants with a chronic or situationally induced promotion focus compared to participants with a prevention focus. These studies also show that as participants move closer to the goal of completing the task, speed increases and accuracy decreases for participants with a promotion focus, whereas speed decreases and accuracy increases for participants with a prevention focus. Study 4 basically replicates these results for situationally induced regulatory focus with a more complex proofreading task. The study found that a promotion focus led to faster proofreading compared to a prevention focus, whereas a prevention focus led to higher accuracy in finding more difficult errors than a promotion focus. Through speed and searching for easy errors, promotion focus participants maximized their proofreading performance. In all four studies, the speed effects were independent of the accuracy effects and vice versa. These results show that speed/accuracy (or quantity/quality) decisions are influenced by the strategic inclinations of participants varying in regulatory focus rather than by a built-in trade-off.