Seeing oneself in one’s choices: Construal level and self-pertinence of electoral and consumer decisions

Building on previous research examining the implications for self-regulation and decision making of construing action at varying levels of abstraction, the authors proposed that construing action in terms of its abstract purposes facilitates orienting one’s decisions toward the standards, characteristics, and goalspurposes facilitates orienting one’s decisions toward the standards, characteristics, and goals that define one’s desired self-concept. Consistent with this proposal, desiring for oneself a political candidate’s personal qualities predicted evaluating favorably (in Study 1) and voting for (in Study 2) that candidate to a greater extent among participants focused on the distal future (and presumably construing action at a relatively high-level of abstraction) than the proximal future (and presumably construing action at a relatively low-level of abstraction). Moreover, individuals chronically construing action in high-level terms responded more favorably to advertisements appealing to their desired self-concept (in Study 3) than to product quality. These findings’ implications for decision making are discussed. 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc. Everyday life entails innumerable decisions that can be interpreted in myriad ways. Consumer purchases, for instance, can be based on a product’s appearance, performance, durability, price, and environmental impact, as well as on how it was created (e.g., sweatshop-free clothing) and acquired (e.g., fair-trade coffee). Decision processing time itself also is a significant decision-making cost (Janis & Mann, 1977) that can undermine outcome satisfaction (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). How do people decide which of so many characteristics to base their decisions on? Extensive research has examined numerous factors directly impacting the salience of specific decision features, such as the scent of freshly baked cookies (Ditto, Pizarro, Epstein, Jacobson, & MacDonald, 2006) or the emotional expressivity of political candidates (Caprara & Zimbardo, 2004; Glaser & Salovey, 1998). The present work sought to examine whether a general psychological variable, level of action construal, facilitates organizing many sorts of decisions along the single dimension of those decisions’ relations to one’s desired self-concept. Action construal and decision making Any action can be construed at varying levels of abstraction, from low levels, specifying its process, or how it is performed, to high levels, specifying its purpose, or why it is performed (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987). Individuals differ in their chronic tendencies to construe actions (such as ‘‘joining the army”) in high-level terms Elsevier Inc. reitas). (e.g., ‘‘promoting the nation’s defense”) or low-level terms (e.g., ‘‘signing up”; Vallacher & Wegner, 1989). Increasing temporal distance also increases the salience of abstract, high-level features of actions and situations (Liberman & Trope, 1998). Construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003) has clarified the conditions under which decisions reflect desirability versus feasibility considerations (e.g., the interestingness versus admission price of a concert; Liberman & Trope, 1998), primary versus secondary considerations (e.g., whether a desired radio also includes a clock, Trope & Liberman, 2000), and outcomes versus procedures (e.g., the prize value versus selection criteria of lotteries; Sagristano, Trope, & Liberman, 2002). This research generally has shown that increasing temporal distance increases the extent to which decisions reflect the desirability of outcomes relevant to the primary identification of a particular activity. High-level action construals thus have been hypothesized to focus one’s attention on an activity’s essence, such that one orients one’s decisions toward maximizing what one perceives to be the activity’s central aim (Trope & Liberman, 2003). Seeing oneself in one’s choices The present work examined how decisions come to reflect considerations external to the primary identification of a particular activity. Among the most abstract purposes people pursue is being the kind of person each of us aspires to be. Cybernetic models thus place desired self-concepts at the very top of goal hierarchies, with more concrete sub-goals serving as means of realizing those abstract self-standards (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1999, Fig. 1.5; Powers, 1973). Because perceiving discrepancies between actual and deA.L. Freitas et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008) 1174–1179 1175 sired self-concepts causes negative affect (e.g., Higgins, 1987), people typically strive to behave consistently with their desired selfconcepts, such that even relatively mundane actions can come to be viewed in relation to them (e.g., James, 1890; Kim & Markus, 1999; Piacentini & Mailer, 2004; Snyder & Fromkin, 1980). We propose, then, that construing an action (e.g., ‘‘joining the army”) in terms of its high-level purposes should lead one to consider not only its anticipated outcomes (e.g., ‘‘promoting the nation’s defense”), but also its relations to one’s own important self-guides (e.g., ‘‘being strong”; ‘‘being brave”; or ‘‘being responsible”). When focused on immediate, low-level details of action, in contrast, behaviors and decisions should be more likely to be viewed as compartmentalized within the domain or task at hand and therefore not pertinent to one’s self-views (see also Baumeister, 1990; Emmons, 1992), as has been speculated to be true of individuals who commit atrocities while focusing exclusively on the low-level details of their behavior (Lifton, 1986). The present experiments tested the hypothesis that construing action in high-level terms, whether due to chronic individual differences (Vallacher & Wegner, 1989) or to increases in temporal distance (Trope & Liberman, 2003), increases the extent to which one relates one’s present decisions to one’s self-standards. While potentially advancing research on decision making by showing how different sorts of decisions can become organized around the single dimension of those decisions’ relations to one’s desired self-concept, this proposal also can advance research on construal levels by showing how a high-level action construal can prompt one to go beyond the essence of a particular activity (cf. Trope & Liberman, 2003) to link that activity to one’s broader self-relevant goals. When deciding between political candidates, for example, the present analysis suggests that construing action in high-level terms should increase the extent to which one favors candidates whose characteristics are compatible with one’s own desired self-views. Analogously, consumer-product advertisements appealing to one’s desired self-views should be more effective among consumers construing action in high-level than low-level terms. These hypotheses were tested in three studies that either manipulated temporal distance (Studies 1 and 2) or measured chronic individual differences in action identification (Study 3). Fig. 1. Predicted values of perceiving Hillary R. Clinton to be qualified to be US President, for participants imagining H.R. Clinton to take office in the near or distant-future and scoring 1 SD above and below the group mean of desiring for themselves H.R. Clinton’s personal attributes. Study 1: Personally admiring a presidential candidate Participants first listed attributes of US politician Hillary R. Clinton. They next indicated the extent to which they desired possessing those attributes themselves and the extent to which they viewed H.R. Clinton to be qualified to be US President in the near or distant future. We propose that construing decisions in high-level terms facilitates linking those decisions to one’s own self-defining standards, thereby increasing one’s impetus to organize one’s behavior toward those standards. When evaluating or deciding between political candidates, construing action in high-level terms should increase attraction to candidates that embody the characteristics one strives to realize oneself. One’s choice then would be experienced as pertinent to how one sees oneself, rather than as a discrete, compartmentalized action with little bearing on one’s self-views. Accordingly, we predicted that desiring to possess H.R. Clinton’s attributes would predict perceiving her as qualified to be US president to a greater extent among participants focused on the distal rather than proximal future.