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We investigate whether people's regulatory mode (assessment and locomotion) and social comparison motives (self‐evaluation vs. self‐enhancement) jointly influence with whom—either a peer or their leader—individuals prefer to compare. In three preregistered studies (N = 839), we measured participants' chronic regulatory mode and assessed their comparison target preference separately for different social comparison motives. For each motive, participants indicated with whom they would prefer to compare, using choice (Study 1) and rating (Studies 2 and 3) measures. Supporting our predictions, assessment interacted with social comparison motives such that assessment was positively associated with preferring to compare to peers for self‐enhancement motives, but unrelated to comparison target preference regarding self‐evaluation motives. In addition, and as predicted, locomotion was consistently positively associated with preferring leaders as comparison target, independently of social comparison motives. These results contribute to emerging research highlighting the key role of individuals' regulatory mode in understanding interpersonal dynamics at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior work showed that leadership preferences depend not only on followers' characteristics, but also on contextual features. We investigated how regulatory mode (assessment – a concern with "getting things right" vs. locomotion – a concern with "getting things done" in goal pursuit) and the definition of quality criteria (i.e. whether or not there are predefined standards to evaluate task or work performance) jointly influence followers' preferences for directive and participative leadership. We measured (Study 1, N = 503) and experimentally induced (Study 2, N = 497) followers' regulatory mode before presenting them with task instructions that either clearly defined quality criteria or left them undefined. In both studies, participants were led to believe that they would work on a task with a supervising leader and indicated their preferred leader style for the task. Contrary to predictions, results do not suggest that the definition of quality criteria moderates the influence of followers' regulatory mode on their leadership preferences. Independent of quality criteria conditions, both chronic assessment and locomotion predicted preferences for directive leadership; additionally, chronic locomotion strongly predicted preferences for participative leadership. However, the induced regulatory mode did not influence leadership preferences. Further work is needed to better understand the role of context in self-regulatory dynamics and leadership style preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]