Mental Construal Research Articles

The psychological interaction of spam email features

This study explored distinct perceptual and decisional contributions to spam email mental construal. Participants classified spam emails according to pairings of three stimulus features – presence or absence of awkward prose, abnormal message structure, and implausible premise. We examined dimensional interactions within general recognition theory (GRT; a multidimensional extension of signal detection theory). Classification accuracy was highest for categories containing either two non-normal dimension levels (e.g. awkward prose and implausible premise) or two normal dimension levels (e.g. normal prose and plausible premise). Modelling indicated both perceptual and decisional contributions to classification responding. In most cases, perceptual discriminability was higher along one dimension when stimuli contained a non-normal level of the paired dimension (e.g. prose discriminability was higher with abnormal structure). Similarly, decision criteria along one dimension were biased in favour of the non-normal response when stimuli contained a non-normal level of the paired dimension. Potential applications for training are discussed.Practitioner summary: We applied general recognition theory (i.e. multivariate signal detection theory) to spam email classification at low or high levels of three stimulus dimensions: premise plausibility, prose quality, and email structure. Relevant to training, this approach helped identify perceptual and decisional biases that could be leveraged to individualise training.

Mental Construal and Employee Engagement: For More Engagement Look at the Big Picture

This article links research in cognitive and social psychology to that in human resources management by proposing a conceptual model of the impact of mental construal on employee engagement. Based on construal-level theory, I suggest that an abstract mindset can facilitate the process of employee engagement in task work. Specifically, I address the effect of abstract representation of the work situation in an individual’s mind on the features of engagement as being cognitive (attention, self-regulation, commitment, and job involvement), affective (positive affectivity), and behavioral (organizational citizenship behavior, role extension, and prosocial behavior). I also briefly discuss the importance of task characteristics. The proposed model offers new possibilities for human resources practices by introducing relatively new psychological techniques that can impact employees’ attitudes and behaviors in the workplace.

The Role of Construal Level in Message Effects Research: A Review and Future Directions

Abstract Construal level theory is a recent psychological theory that examines the relationship between psychological distance and mental construal. However, the theory’s implications for message effects research requires more attention. Construal level theory can guide new hypotheses that test the persuasiveness of certain combinations of message features and tailoring messages to different individual orientations. This is possible as the theory may reveal underlying similarities across disparate message topics, design elements, and message processing styles. Core principles of construal level theory are explicated, and message effects research areas that may benefit from its propositions are reviewed and elaborated upon. Finally, caveats of applying the theory to message effects research and future directions are discussed.

Effect of mental construals on cooperative and competitive conflict management styles

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the psychological antecedents and processes that lead to competitive or cooperative attitudes in conflict management using the lens of construal level theory (CLT). CLT suggests that adopting a distal versus proximal psychological perspective changes the way people think and behave. This research explores the systematic effect of these abstract versus concrete mental construals on preferred conflict management styles.Design/methodology/approachFirst, theoretically grounded hypotheses linking different mental construals to cooperative and competitive conflict management styles were formulated. Subsequently, four empirical studies were conducted to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe studies provide support to the hypotheses showing that high construal abstract thinking is linked to preference for cooperation while low construal thinking is linked to preference for competition. Further, two different psychological processes mediate participants’ preferences for cooperative and competitive conflict management styles, the former mediated by perspective taking and empathic concern and the latter by impulsivity and aggression.Research limitations/implicationsThe research measures conflict management styles rather than actual behavior. Also, focus is on trait mental construals rather than priming of high or low construal thinking.Practical implicationsDeeper understanding of the psychology of cooperative and competitive conflict management styles can help parties attain better outcomes and can potentially contribute to training and talent development by educating conflict management practitioners.Social implicationsThe findings of this research can potentially inform effective interventions aimed at reducing intergroup conflicts.Originality/valueMental construals and related psychological processes are linked to conflict management styles for the first time.

Improving Temporal Consistency of Preferences: The Influence of Mental Construal.

Majority of the current literature on mental construal has focused on effects of varying construal levels on preference shifts whereas this research investigates the influence of mental construal on the change of preference consistency over time. Building on construal level theory, we propose that high-level construal, which creates abstract, and decontextualized mental representations, leads individuals to more consistent preferences than low-level construal, which creates concrete, and contextualized mental representations. Furthermore we examine the effect of having a matching versus non-matching construal level at two different evaluation instances, on achieving greater extents of consistency. To test this prediction a mixed experimental design is employed, in which participants evaluated electronic products at two different sessions. It is demonstrated that when participants have the same construal level at two points in time, their evaluations become similar since they mentally construe the objects in the same way whereas when the construal level differs at these two points, participants focus on different aspects of the products, form different evaluations and have less consistent preferences.

Overcoming the Liability of Novelty: The Power of Framing

When is novelty more likely to elicit a favorable evaluation? Building on social psychology research, which shows that mental construals influence evaluation and decision-making, we argue that the appeal of novel ideas and the willingness to invest in them vary with the mental processes through which audiences evaluate them. We conducted a series of experiments to study how different levels of mental construals shift the evaluation outcomes. Our findings show that evaluators appreciate more (i.e., like more and are more willing to invest in) highly novel ideas when those ideas are framed in concrete “How” terms; whereas the evaluator’s appreciation of incremental ideas increases with abstract “Why” framing. That is, which type of linguistic framing is more or less effective depends on the degree of novelty (high vs. low) of those ideas. Also, we find that when novelty is framed in “How” terms evaluators prefer more novel ideas over incremental ones, but when novelty is framed in “Why” terms this difference disappears, suggesting that an abstract framing decreases the appeal gap between the more novel and the less novel ideas. Finally, we unpack the underlying cognitive process by providing evidence of the mediating role of perceived usefulness. Focusing on the framing of novel ideas and marrying it with construal level theory offers a number of contributions to research on innovation and entrepreneurship and, more generally, social evaluation. In particular, we generate insights into how innovators can deploy linguistic strategies to shape audiences’ perceptions of their novelty claims.

Actualization of the concept SECLUSION in the fiction of K. Vonnegut, K. Kesey, J. Fowles and V. Holt

The article aims to reveal linguistic and cognitive features of the concept seclusion in the novels by K. Vonnegut, K. Kesey, J. Fowles, and V. Holt. Such notions as loneliness, solitude, isolation, alienation have been the subject of philosophical, linguistic, psychological, sociological, and literary research. The concept under analysis is seen as a unit that tends to combine various senses of the notions mentioned above. This article is written in the framework of cognitive linguistics. Generally, a concept is recognized as a unit of our cognition and memory. Concepts reflect and shape our experience and knowledge about the world in the form of verbal signs and mental construals. The verbal embodiment of a concept in a text is a verbal poetic image, which is defined as a linguo-cognitive text construct which has preconceptual, conceptual and verbal planes. Therefore, we treat the concept seclusion as a linguocognitive construction, which integrates the above-mentioned aspects. Since “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature”, the approach to the studying of such an abstract concept as seclusion by means of the reconstruction of the main metaphorical structures underlying the given concept comes in very handy. Thus, primary attention is paid to the conceptual analysis of selected verbal poetic images with the purpose to reconstruct various conceptual schemes underlying such images. The research revealed that the presentation of the concept in the analyzed fiction is highly stereotypical (used by the most part of the authors). The concept is tied with such stereotypical metaphorical concepts as container (cage / prison, trap), good (happiness / luck / safety), and bad (unhappiness, down, darkness). Many of the metaphors are the authors’ individual variations of the common ones (e.g. seclusion is a prison cell / crypt / lunatic asylum / cacoon / killing bottle / waiting room / aviary / menagerie / valuable commodity etc.). There were singled out a number of metaphors which are closely linked to the concept of seclusion: seclusion is a separate world, people are islands, time is thick liquid / syrup / amber, heart is a container for loneliness, to name just a few.

If you want a quick kiss, make it count: How choice of syntactic construction affects event construal.

When we hear an event description, our mental construal is not only based on lexical items, but also on the message’s syntactic structure. This has been well-studied in the domains of causation, event participants, and object conceptualization. Less studied are the construals of temporality and numerosity as a function of syntax. We present a theory of how syntax affects the construal of event similarity and duration in a way that is systematically predictable from the interaction of mass/count syntax and verb semantics, and test these predictions in six studies. Punctive events in count syntax (give a kiss) and durative events in mass syntax (give advice) are construed as taking less time than in transitive frame (kiss and advise). Durative verbs in count syntax (give a talk), however, result in a semantic shift, orthogonal to duration estimates. These results demonstrate how syntactic and semantic structure together systematically affect event construal.

Interventions to encourage sustainable consumption

Sustainable consumption is hampered by a discrepancy between consumers’ attitudes and their actual behaviour in the market place. Psychological construal level theory provides an explanation for the attitude to behaviour gap as a motivational conflict between high and low level of mental construal. Based on self-determination theory it is argued that this motivational conflict presupposes extrinsic motivation for sustainable behaviour. Based on self-regulatory styles, the present paper identifies and illustrates four types of intervention strategies that can cater for extrinsic motivation for sustainable development among light users. The underlying mechanisms of these interventions suggest that the transition from external to internal regulation is catalysed by social feedback.

Abstract Mindsets Increase Believability of Spatially Distant Online Messages.

Growing evidence from online credibility research reveals that online users rely on heuristic processes to evaluate the credibility of online information. The current paper, which is based on the construal level theory (CLT), proposes that congruency between the psychological distance of a stimulus and the way it is mentally construed can act as a heuristic for believability. According to CLT, psychologically close (e.g., spatially, temporally, socially) stimuli are represented concretely whereas psychologically distant stimuli are represented abstractly. The level of mental construals and the psychological distance of information have been shown to influence people’s truth judgments in offline contexts. This study tests whether congruency between the construal level of people’s mindsets (abstract vs. concrete) and the psychological distance implied in an online message (far vs. close) enhances message believability. By partially confirming CLT predictions, we found that believability of an online news item about a distant location increased when people maintained an abstract mindset rather than a concrete one. The effect of a concrete mindset on believability was not significant for the close psychological distance condition. Our findings provide initial evidence that congruency between the construal level of people’s mindsets and psychological distance cues in online messages can act as a heuristic for believability. We discuss the potential of applying the CLT framework to the growing literature on online cognitive heuristics in the area of online information credibility.

Construal Level Shapes Associations Between Political Conservatism and Reactions to Male Same-Sex Intimacy

Abstract. This research examined how construal level and the salience of moral values affect relationships between political ideology and moral reactions to same-sex issues. In Study 1 (N = 170), political conservatism was a stronger predictor of moral reactions to physical intimacy between a male same-sex couple (vs. an opposite-sex couple). However, this was only true among participants induced to adopt an abstract (vs. concrete) construal level. Study 2 (N = 152) found political conservatism was a stronger predictor of moral negativity to physical intimacy between men when the idea of moral purity (vs. fairness) was made salient. However, this effect only occurred among participants induced to adopt an abstract (vs. concrete) level of mental construal. The implications of this research for better understanding when social-cognitive factors interact with political ideology to influence moral reactions toward same-sex social policy issues are discussed.

Psychological distance modulates the performance of the embodiment effect: Evidence from behavioral and ERP studies

Research on embodied cognition suggests the ubiquity of embodiment effects during interaction with the environment. However, construal level theory (CLT) holds that these effects could be moderated by the psychological distance between self and objects and are attenuated by higher-level mental construal. The current research explored the "action-evaluation" embodiment effect in the evaluation of words located at different spatial distances. Results showed that for "short-distance" words, the response model conflicted with this embodiment effect slower reaction time and induced a larger P2 component than the opposite response model. However, evaluation of "long-distance" words was not significantly influenced by the response model. The results are consistent with CLT and suggest that the action-evaluation embodiment effect influences the coding and execution of evaluating actions, but only for stimuli at close psychological distance locations.

Applying the construal level theory to improve oral self-care behavior: A pilot study

AimThe present pilot study assesses the possibility of using messages framed under the construal level theory for improving the intentions of brushing, flossing, and visiting the dentist. The theory states that individuals create mental construals about intangible situations; such construals will be abstract or concrete depending on the perceived distance from that situation.Materials and methodsA longitudinal post-test-only quantitative experiment was conducted with 90 participants randomly allocated into three experimental groups, who received information on oral health framed in abstract, abstract with a self-reminder or concrete terms. Measures of intention, attitudes, perceived message cognition value, and past behavior were obtained through an online survey at two different points in time.ResultsContrary to expectations, individuals exposed to the concrete message showed higher intention to brush and to visit the dentist. In general, attitude towards the oral self-care behavior was a good predictor of the intention to perform. Past behavior is a better predictor for intention than message framing and attitudes.ConclusionsThe results of this exploratory research might aid the development of future studies aimed at further understanding the use of the construal level theory in the field of oral self-care. When aiming at changing an oral self-care behavior, it is crucial to understand past behavior. Messages framed under this theory could be successful at improving brushing and visiting the dentist intentions.

Feeling depleted and powerless: the construal-level mechanism.

Individuals exercise self-control daily to achieve desired goals; at the same time, people engage in social interaction daily and influence (feel powerful) or are influenced (feel powerless) by others. Does controlling the self have an unforeseen consequence for people's perception of their capacity to control others? Five studies-one correlational and four experimental-demonstrate that ego depletion from prior self-control determines one's personal sense of power; low-level, concrete mental construals account for this relationship. Our results showed that people with higher trait self-control reported a greater sense of power (Study 1). People who had depleted their self-control-related regulatory resources (vs. those who had not) experienced a lower sense of power (Study 2). The relationship between ego depletion and low sense of power was mediated by construal level (Study 3) and observed only when low-level, concrete construals were present, but not under high-level, abstract construals (Studies 4 and 5).

Using Construal Level Theory to Motivate Accounting Research: A Literature Review

ABSTRACT This study reviews extant literature on construal level theory (CLT) of psychological distance (Liberman and Trope 1998; Trope and Liberman 2003). According to CLT, the concept of psychological distance constitutes a common meaning shared by four interrelated dimensions: temporal distance, social distance, spatial distance, and hypotheticality. The core premise is that psychological distance is tied to the level of mental construal (i.e., mental representation), such that more distant objects (or situations) are construed at a higher level and higher-level construals evoke thoughts of more distant objects (Trope and Liberman 2010). CLT further suggests that mental construals influence evaluation, prediction, and behavior (Trope, Liberman, and Wakslak 2007). In spite of the fact that CLT is considered a prominent contemporary theory and comprehensive framework for judgment and decision-making, behavioral accounting research, with few exceptions, has largely ignored the theory's predictions and insights. However, as accounting, auditing, and business in general become increasingly global and geographically dispersed, the perspectives provided by CLT should no longer be ignored. This study aims at illustrating CLT's potential for investigating hitherto unexplained phenomena within the accounting domain and argues that CLT provides the potential for a superior understanding of the heuristics and biases in judgment and decision-making that are associated with distance-affected decision environments. The paper reviews the findings reported in 88 articles (and one book chapter) with an emphasis on publications that apply CLT in contexts that are of particular interest to accounting researchers. CLT's underlying theoretical logic, its commonalities, and its differences with related theories and models are explained through a detailed review of the insights gained from basic CLT research. Commonly applied methods associated with experimental manipulations are highlighted, and broad, CLT-based research questions pertaining to various accounting domains are offered.

Seeing the Big Picture: The Effect of Height on the Level of Construal

Drawing on research on grounded cognition and metaphorical representation, the authors propose and confirm in five studies that physical height, or even the mere concept of height, can affect the perceptual and conceptual levels of mental construal. As such, consumers who perceive themselves to be physically “high” or elevated are more likely to adopt a global perceptual processing and higher level of conceptual construal, whereas those who perceive themselves to be physically “low” are more likely to adopt a local perceptual processing and lower level of conceptual construal. This difference in construal level also affects product choices that involve trade-offs between long-term benefits and short-term effort. The authors address alternative accounts such as vertical distance, visual distance, and perceived power. By highlighting the novel relationship between height and construal level, these findings contribute to research on grounded cognition and construal-level theory while also providing practical suggestions to marketing managers across a variety of domains.

Psychological Distance and the Fear of Crime

Construal level theory of psychological distance (CLT) is a social psychological theory that explores the mechanisms that people use to experience and express reactions to distal events, i.e., events that are not present in the ‘here and now’. The first mechanism is psychological distance from or proximity to the distal event in question; the second mechanism is mental construal of the distal event itself. In this chapter we consider the applicability of CLT for research into people’s representations of crime and their fear of crime. Our goals are twofold: (a) to stimulate new lines of enquiry in criminological research into fear of crime and (b) to discuss their theoretical and policy implications.

Promoting Later Planned Retirement: The Differential Impact of Construal Level Interventions for Younger and Older Individuals

textabstractIndividuals’ planned retirement age is affected by a trade-off between financial costs (a feasibility oriented consideration) and the number of years in retirement (a desirability oriented consideration). Previous research shows that construal level interventions (i.e., activating a global vs. local mindset with individuals) affect the relative importance of these two types of decision aspects such that primary considerations become more important under a global mindset compared to secondary considerations. In this research we predict that this results in an age-related reversal of the effect of a construal level induced global mindset on planned retirement age. The reason is that as individuals’ chronic temporal distance to retirement decreases (i.e., they become older) their primary retirement goals are likely to change. Younger individuals are temporally distant from retirement and primarily driven by desirability goals, while older individuals are temporally close to retirement and driven by feasibility goals. Therefore, since a global construal level intervention increases the impact of individuals’ primary goals, we predict that such an intervention decreases planned retirement age for the younger age group but increases it for the older age group. Results from two online surveys confirm this predicted decision process. They show first that indeed younger individuals are more likely than older individuals to plan for a retirement age that they cannot afford. Second, the results demonstrate that a construal level intervention-induced global mindset increases the impact of desirability considerations on planned retirement age for younger individuals (and lowers planned retirement age), but that it increases the impact of feasibility considerations for older individuals (and increases planned retirement age). Jointly, these findings underline the importance of taking into account both individuals’ chronic and situationally-induced mental construals of the planned retirement decision when designing policy communications to promote individuals’ retirement at a later age.

Feeling Depleted and Powerless: The Construal-Level Mechanism

Does controlling the self have an unforeseen consequence related to controlling others? We propose that one's efforts at self-control determine one's personal sense of power. Low- level, concrete mental construals explain this relationship. Five studies—one correlational and four experimental—tested our hypothesis that self-control resource-depletion leads individuals to adopt more concrete construals and in turn experience a low sense of power. In line with this, our results suggest that people with higher trait self-control reported a greater sense of power (pretest). People who had depleted their self-control resources (vs. those who had not) experienced a lower sense of power (Experiment 1) and adopted a low-level, concrete construal (Experiment 2). The relationship between self-control resource- depletion and low sense of power was mediated by low-level, concrete construals (Experiment 3) and observed only when these were present, and eliminated under high-level, abstract construals (Experiment 4).

Situational Materialism: How Entering Lotteries May Undermine Self-Control

Although materialism is linked to self-control failure, the underlying process remains unclear. By manipulating materialistic thoughts via state-sponsored lotteries, this research examines why materialism may undermine self-control. Across four studies, this research demonstrates that entering a lottery tends to activate materialistic thoughts and that these thoughts generally constitute low-level construal, which, in turn, results in self-control failure. This effect is moderated by the degree to which people are oriented toward extrinsic values. In addition, when materialistic thoughts are diverted, entering a lottery has no effect on self-control. In summary, this research highlights that materialism, although stable and enduring, can manifest itself in a burst of materialistic thoughts. The research provides important implications for research on materialism, self-control, and mental construal.