Achieving Your Goals or Protecting Their Future? The Effects of Self-View on Goals and Choices

We show that encouraging consumers to think about themselves as independent or interdependent, making either promotion or prevention goals salient, has a systematic effect on inferred risk preferences. Interdependent self-view consumers, who are more interested in avoiding losses than in achieving gains, choose less risky alternatives than independent self-view consumers. However, because of asymmetric preferences for status quo alternatives, information about previous choices moderates the goal-mediated effect of self-view on choice. (c) 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..