Counteractive Construal in Consumer Goal Pursuit

Abstract

The present research explores a self-control operation, namely, counteractive construal, that helps consumers resolve the conflicts between an important goal and a short-term temptation by altering the construal of the temptation. We propose that when experiencing a self-control conflict, consumers intentionally construe temptation as more damaging to the attainment of a long-term goal and use these distorted construals to help resolve the conflict in favor of the goals. Four studies in two self-regulatory domains (a dieting goal and an academic goal) provided converging evidence for the counteractive construal hypothesis. We found that people who were experiencing self-control conflict expected tempting food items to contain more calories or expected parties to take more time away from studying and were consequently less interested in consuming these temptations.