What are Prevention & Promotion Mindsets?
This set of mindsets involves how people approach life. Do they approach life from a state of fear? Or, do they approach life from a state of opportunity?
Pro-tip: If you haven’t read the article “What are Mindsets?” read that first before reading this article.
What are Prevention and Promotion Mindsets?
Prevention mindsets are mental lenses that orient individuals toward not losing or avoiding losses. If a captain of a ship has a prevention mindset, he is primarily focused on ensuring things run smoothly, no problems or leaks occur, and risk is limited. In turn, he is focused on those things which are urgent, and not necessarily on those things that are most important. As such, what ends up happening is that the ship ends up drifting wherever the winds and currents take it.
Promotion mindsets are mental lenses that orient individuals toward winning and gains. If a captain of a ship has a promotion mindset, she is primarily focused on a clear destination and making progress toward it. Thus, she is primarily focused on what is most important. Additionally, rather than trying to avoid problems and risks, she understands that these are necessary for progress, and thus anticipates and prepares for them. As such, what ends up happening is that this captain’s boat is willing to brave rough waters or go against the current in order to reach a specified goal or destination.
Why are these mindsets so important?
Research Summary of the Effects of Possessing Either Fixed or Growth Mindsets
Fortunately, we have 30+ years of academic research on prevention and promotion mindsets that have been able to clearly demonstrate the effect these mindsets have on how we operate. This research has repeatedly demonstrated that those that have a promotion mindset think and process much more effectively than those with a prevention mindset in three primary ways.
First, a promotion mindset positively influences how we interpret situational cues.
| Those with a prevention Mindset | Those with a promotion Mindset |
|---|---|
| Seek to minimize pain | Seek to maximize pleasure |
| More prone to negative thinking | More prone to positive thinking |
| Sensitive to cues that indicate the likelihood of negative affect, safety, and security | Sensitive to cues that indicate the likelihood of positive affect, growth, and accomplishment |
| Focused on fulfilling duties and obligations, maintaining acceptable standards of performance, and limiting mistakes and errors | Focused on accomplishing goals and aspirations, advancing and making progress, and fulfilling one’s ideal self |
Second, a promotion mindset activates specific processing dynamics to navigate our situations in a manner aligned with our interpretation of situational cues.
| Those with a prevention Mindset | Those with a promotion Mindset |
|---|---|
| Motivated to avoid problems and losses, programming them for vigilance, avoidance, stability, exploitation, and maintaining status quo | Motivated to seek winning and gains, programming them for eagerness, speed, achievement, exploration, and change |
| Negative and/or weak relationships with job satisfaction, affective commitment, and engagement | Strong positive relationships with job satisfaction, affective commitment, and engagement |
| Moderate positive relationship with continuance commitment (the most negative form of commitment) | Small positive relationship with continuance commitment (the most negative form of commitment) |
| Small positive relationship with normative commitment | Moderate positive relationship with normative commitment |
Third, a promotion mindset activates specific behavioral dispositions to navigate our situations in a manner aligned with our interpretation of situational cues.
| Those with a prevention Mindset | Those with a promotion Mindset |
|---|---|
| Generally underperforms relative to those with a promotion focus | Generally outperforms those with a prevention focus |
| Less likely to set goals and exhibit persistence | Sets more challenging goals and exhibit greater persistence |
| Small or non-significant relationships with task performance, organizational behavior, and innovative performance | Moderate positive relationships with task performance, organizational behavior, and innovative performance |
| Moderate positive relationship with counterproductive work behaviors | Moderate negative relationship with counterproductive work behaviors |
| Strong positive relationship with safety performance | Moderate negative relationship with safety performance |
Conclusion
Overall, 30+ years of research on prevention and promotion mindsets demonstrates that if we have one person/team/organization that is promotion-minded, they will outperform another person/team/organization that is prevention-minded every time.
Your Personal Mindset Report should have revealed the quality of your mindsets along the fixed-growth continuum relative to over 20,000+ people who have completed the assessment.
