Regulatory Fit and Persuasion Through Advocacy Messages and Narratives

This book puts current research on regulatory fit and persuasion into the larger contexts of elaboration likelihood and transportation likelihood (the likelihood of becoming experientially engaged with a narrative). The author lays the groundwork by describing regulatory fit with prevention focus and promotion focus, how regulatory fit is operationally defined, and how it can affects judgments through feelings-as-information, metacognitive, and other processes. Then current research on how regulatory fit affects persuasion is reviewed through advocacy messages and through narratives, noting where interpretational ambiguities exist. Finally, how the effects of regulatory fit on persuasion might differ according to elaboration or transportation likelihood are speculated, according to whether the regulatory-fit experience results from an initial event unrelated to the communication or from engagement with the communication itself.