Harbingers of foul play: A field study of gain/loss frames and regulatory fit in the NFL

Do people cheat more when they have something to gain, or when they have something to lose? The answer to this question isn’t straightforward, as research is mixed when it comes to understanding how unethical people will be when they might acquire something good versus avoid something bad. To wit, research has found that people cheat more in a loss (vs. gain) frame, yet research on regulatory focus has found that people cheat more in a promotion focus (where the focus is on acquiring gains) than in a prevention focus (where the focus is on avoiding losses). Through a large-scale field study containing 332,239 observations including 27,350 transgressions, we address the contradictory results of gain/loss frames and regulatory focus on committing unethical behavior in a context that contains a high risk of detecting unethical behavior (NFL football games). Our results replicated the separate effects of more cheating in a loss frame, and more cheating in a promotion focus. Furthermore, our data revealed a heretofore undocumented crossover interaction, in accordance with regulatory fit, which could disentangle past results: Specifically, we found promotion focus is associated with more cheating in a loss (vs. gain) frame, whereas prevention focus is associated with more cheating in a gain (vs. loss) frame. In gridiron football, this translates to offensive players fouling more when their team is losing (vs. winning) and defensive players fouling more when their team is winning (vs. losing).