Leigh Ann Vaughn, Chase Garvey (Psychology BA, 2021), and Rachael Chalachan (Psychology BA, 2021) presented "Need support and regulatory focus in responding to COVID-19" at the Annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. The conference was virtual this year. The poster is publicly available here, and the poster links to the published article: osf.io/afu6k/
Prevention focus serves the need for security, and promotion focus serves the need for growth. Participants (N = 401) in the first four weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic judged prevention more useful than promotion focus for responding to the virus. Controlling for relationships between support of needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness in responding to the virus, autonomy related positively to judged usefulness of promotion, and relatedness related positively to judged usefulness of prevention.