LAUSR

This research sought to test the hypothesis that regulatory fit enhances people’s feelings of autonomy. Regulatory fit can be created by prompting people to execute a task using means of task execution that fit (vs. do not fit) their preferred means of goal-pursuit. Assigning people to do a task using a particular means implies they do not exercise choice in applying their preferred means of goal-pursuit. Nevertheless, we reasoned that fitting task means would lead to higher feelings of autonomy while working on a task because, under conditions of regulatory fit, people are using the means that they would have chosen if they had been given choice. We conducted 10 experiments (total N = 3,124) to test the effect of regulatory fit versus regulatory non-fit on experienced autonomy and a meta-analysis of the effects supported our hypothesis for both promotion focus-based fit and prevention focus-based fit.