Abstract: Deadline has its influences on people’s life in every aspect while these influences vary a lot. Previous researches revealed that self-regulatory and time-perspective are related. The interplay between these two variables can influence people’s regret, time orientation, planning fallacy and the like. The present study attempted to examine the combined effects of regulatory focus and deadline’s length, outcome framing, and overall valence on deadline’s effect. In the experiment 1, 61 college students were required to finish the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire and an immediate negotiation task, together with a prediction and a post-evaluation. In the experiment 2, 276 college students were divided into promotion or prevention focus through the use of a maze task, and then, they were required to finish a series of cognition tasks during which the length of deadline is controlled by a countdown counter, finally, the participants were required to complete the questionnaire about deadline’s effect. In the experiment 3, firstly, 259 participants were also divided into promotion or prevention focus through the use of a maze task, and then they were required to read the instructions which involved different outcome framing and overall valence, after that, they were asked to finish a series of cognition tasks, finally, they completed the questionnaire about deadline’s effect. The t-tests and ANOVAs revealed that: (1) Deadline has obstructive effect on tasks regardless of the prediction before the task or the post-evaluation after the task. For prevention-focused participants, the effect of deadlines is stronger than for promotion-focused participants; (2) Regulatory focus has moderating effect between the length of deadline and the deadline’s effect. To be exact, in shorter deadline, prevention-focused participants believe that deadline has stronger obstructive effect than promotion-focused participants, while in longer deadline, promotion-focused participants believe that deadline has stronger obstructive effect than prevention-focused participants; (3) Regulatory focus has moderating effect between outcome framing, overall valence and deadline. To be specific, on the task performances, promotion-focused participants believe that the negative effect of deadline is stronger than prevention-focused participants in the benefit framework; on the task strategy, promotion-focused participants believe the deadline has stronger negative effect in the benefit framework than in the loss framework when they are in the condition of positive value; however, the outcome is opposite when they are in the condition of negative value. Based on the aforementioned results, it can be concluded that the regulatory focus has both main effect and interaction effect on deadline’s effect. Both the theoretical and practical implications of the present study were discussed in the paper. One of the contributions of this research is making a supplement to the existing literature. More importantly, this study discusses the influence of regulatory focus on deadline’s effect the very first time. The results help us deepen the understanding of the deadline and deadline’s effect. This study also provides enlightenment about how to reduce the obstructive effect of deadline in real life.

Key words: regulatory focus, length of deadline, outcome framing, overall valence, deadline’s effect

摘要： 结合调节聚焦探讨了期限的时长、结果框架及效价对期限效果的影响。结果表明，防御聚焦个体认为期限的阻碍效果更大，且调节聚焦对前述变量与期限效果的关系具有调节作用：4分钟期限中防御聚焦组认为期限的阻碍效果更大，8分钟期限中则相反，12和16分钟期限中则无显著差异；收益框架下促进聚焦组认为期限对任务表现的阻碍作用更大，促进聚焦组在正效价条件下认为收益框架下期限对策略使用的阻碍作用更大，但在负效价条件下则相反。

关键词: 调节聚焦, 期限时长, 结果框架, 效价, 期限效果