Being all that you can be: the weighting of potential in assessments of self and others

An accurate assessment of an individual often requires taking their potential into account. Across six studies the authors found that people are more inclined to do so when evaluating themselves than when evaluating others, such that people credit themselves for their perceived potential more than they credit others for theirs. Participants rated potential as a more telling component of the self than of others, and the importance participants placed on their own potential led to attentional biases toward information about their own future potential that did not apply to information about the potential of others. Furthermore, when assessing themselves and other people, participants required more tangible proof that someone else has a given level of potential than they required of themselves, and they relied more on how they would ideally perform in self-assessment but more on how others actually performed in judging them.     

Psychological Distance and the Discrepancy Between Recommendations and Actions

Action hypocrisy is the tendency to recommend behavior for others that one would personally be unwilling to undertake. Six studies examine the relationship between action hypocrisy and psychological distance. Studies 1a and 1b and 2 demonstrate action hypocrisy in three populations and in 2 different contexts. Studies 3 to 5 support a psychological distance explanation for action hypocrisy: people are more likely to choose action for themselves in the future versus the present (Study 3), for someone at a distant location versus a nearby location (Study 4), and for someone who appears to be distant versus close in a photograph (Study 5).     

Idealistic advice and pragmatic choice: a psychological distance account

In 6 studies, we found that advice is more idealistic than choice in decisions that trade off idealistic and pragmatic considerations. We propose that because advisers are more psychologically distant from the choosers' decision problem, they construe the dilemma at a higher construal level than do choosers (Trope & Liberman, 2003, 2010). Consequently, advisers are more influenced by idealistic considerations that are salient at a high-level construal, whereas choosers are more influenced by pragmatic considerations that are salient at a low-level construal. Consistent with this view, Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that compared with choosers, advisers weigh idealistic considerations more heavily and pragmatic considerations less heavily, place greater emphasis on ends (why) than on means to achieve the end (how), and generate more reasons (pros) in favor of acting idealistically. Studies 3 and 4 provide converging support for our account by demonstrating that making advisers focus on a lower construal level results in more pragmatic recommendations. In Study 3, we manufactured more pragmatic recommendations by priming a low-level implementation mind-set in a purportedly unrelated task, whereas in Study 4 we did so by reducing advisers' psychological distance from the dilemma by asking them to consider what they would choose in the situation. The results of Study 4 suggest advisers do not spontaneously consider self-choice. Finally, in Studies 5 and 6, we demonstrate the choice-advice difference in consequential real-life decisions.     

Happiness Runs in a Circular Motion: Evidence for a Positive Feedback Loop between Prosocial Spending and Happiness

We examine whether a positive feedback loop exists between spending money on others (i.e. prosocial spending) and happiness. Participants recalled a previous purchase made for either themselves or someone else and then reported their happiness. Afterward, participants chose whether to spend a monetary windfall on themselves or someone else. Participants assigned to recall a purchase made for someone else reported feeling significantly happier immediately after this recollection; most importantly, the happier participants felt, the more likely they were to choose to spend a windfall on someone else in the near future. Thus, by providing initial evidence for a positive feedback loop between prosocial spending and well-being, these data offer one potential path to sustainable happiness: prosocial spending increases happiness which in turn encourages prosocial spending.     

异性交友决策任务上为不同心理距离他人决策的风险偏好

使用中国文化背景下修订的Beisswanger等人的异性交友决策问卷, 采用2种方法操纵自我-他人心理距离, 考察了男女大学生在后果严重性不同的异性交友决策任务上为不同心理距离他人决策风险偏好的差异。实验1发现, 被试为具体和笼统他人决策时的风险偏好无显著差异, 在后果不严重任务上比后果严重任务上更冒险, 男性比女性更冒险。心理距离与决策者性别的交互作用显著：男性为具体他人决策更冒险, 而女性为笼统他人决策更冒险。实验2发现, 被试为不相似他人比为相似他人决策更冒险, 在后果不严重任务上比在后果严重任务上更冒险, 男性比女性更冒险。后果严重性与决策者性别交互作用显著：男性在后果严重和不严重任务上的风险偏好无显著差异, 而女性在后果不严重任务上比后果严重任务上更冒险。综合两个实验的结果, 可以得出以下结论：相对于具体和笼统他人的区分而言, 相似和不相似他人的区分是一种更加稳定和有效的区分自我-他人心理距离的方法。结合相关研究及理论对结果进行了讨论。     

解释水平视角下的自己-他人决策差异

研究基于解释水平理论, 考察自己决策和为他人提供建议是否存在认知和偏好上的差异。实验一采用2(自己决策/为他人建议)×2(价值：高/低)×2(可行性：高/低)被试间设计, 165名被试代表自己或他人评价选项的吸引力。实验二采用3×2混合设计, 81名被试代表自己、相似或不相似他人, 为“高价值-低可行”和“低价值-高可行”两选项出价。结果支持了“自己-他人决策差异”：自己决策比为他人提建议在更大程度上受可行性高低的影响, 更为偏爱可行性高的选项; 人际相似性能在一定程度上缩小上述差异。     

预期交流与创造力的关系:解释水平的调节作用

该研究探讨了预期交流对创造力的影响, 以及解释水平在其中的调节作用。实验1采用结构性想象任务探讨预期交流是否影响创造力。结果表明, 相较于没有预期交流, 预期交流条件下的个体表现出更高的创造力。实验2采取了创意产生任务, 并探讨了解释水平在其中的调节作用。结果表明, 当完成抽象的、高解释水平任务时, 相较于无预期交流, 预期交流条件下个体在新奇性和变通性两个维度上表现出了更高的创造力; 当完成具体的、低解释水平任务时, 预期交流的效应不复存在。也就是说, 只有当创造力任务要求高解释水平的抽象思维时, 预期交流才能促进创造力的发挥。总结而言, 本研究在过往对于交流与创造力以及解释水平与创造力的研究基础上进一步发现, 对于抽象创造力任务, 虽然真正的信息交流尚未发生, 但仅仅对于交流的预期就会提高创造力水平。     

The Influence of a Foreign Versus Native Language on Creativity

Creativity may be enhanced by contextual factors that contribute to a divergence from conventional and habitual modes of thought. Two studies tested the prediction that a foreign language (that is frequently associated with moving away from the routine experiences) will contribute to originality of solutions, compared to one’s native language. Findings demonstrate that a foreign language confers benefits for creativity on well-established nonverbal tasks. Participants were more creative in designing t-shirt outlines (Study 1) and in drawing an alien character for a story (Study 2) within the context of their foreign, as compared to the native, language. The potential underlying mechanisms and implications of the effect are discussed.     

High Level of Construal and Psychological Distance Reduce Melioration

We examined how level of construal and psychological distance affected performance in a task in which value of alternatives depended on frequency of choice. Melioration, a sub‐optimal choice strategy that fails to take into account such value changes, has been found to be prevalent and difficult to change. Participants repeatedly chose between two buttons to earn as many coins as possible. Button A earned N coins, button B earned N + 3 coins, and N was the number of A presses in the last five trials. In this situation, B has a higher immediate payoff, but because choosing A increases the return from both buttons for the next five trials, maximizing A choices is the optimal strategy. We predicted that because a global perspective is needed to appreciate the dependency of value on frequency of choice, frequency of choosing the globally maximizing alternative (A) would increase when participants apply a higher level of construal and assume a more psychologically distal perspective. Study 1 manipulated construal level through segmenting the sequence of trials into segments of different size, with bigger segments representing higher level of construal. In Study 2, participants played a practice game, and we manipulated the probability of playing the actual game. Both a higher level of construal and a lower probability of playing the actual game (higher distance) increased the number of A choices. These results suggest that a broad perspective that is induced by high level of construal or by psychological distancing may reduce sub‐optimal, meliorating choice. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The norm of self-interest and its effects on social action

Four studies investigated whether people feel inhibited from engaging in social action incongruent with their apparent self-interest. Participants in Study 1 predicted that they would be evaluated negatively were they to take action on behalf of a cause in which they had no stake or in which they had a stake but held stake-incongruent attitudes. Participants in Study 2 reported both surprise and anger when a target person took action on behalf of a cause in which he or she had no stake or in which he or she held stake-incongruent attitudes. In Study 3, individuals felt more comfortable engaging in social action and expected others to respond more favorably toward their actions if the issue was described as more relevant to their own sex than to the opposite sex. In Study 4, the authors found that providing nonvested individuals with psychological standing rendered them as likely as vested individuals to undertake social action. The authors discuss the implications of these results for the relationship between vested interest, social action, and attitude-behavior consistency.     

Lessons from a Faraway land: The effect of spatial distance on creative cognition

Recent research [Förster, J., Friedman, R. S., & Liberman, N. (2004). Temporal construal effects on abstract and concrete thinking: Consequences for insight and creative cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 177-189] has identified temporal distance as a situational moderator of creativity. According to Construal Level Theory [Liberman, N., Trope, Y., & Stephan, E. (2007). Psychological Distance. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: A handbook of basic principles (pp. 353-381). New York: Guilford Press], temporal distance is just one case of the broader construct of psychological distance. In the present research, we investigated the effect of another dimension of psychological distance, namely, spatial distance, on creative cognition and insight problem solving. In two studies, we demonstrate that when the creative task is portrayed as originating from a far rather than close location, participants provide more creative responses (Study 1) and perform better on a problem solving task that requires creative insight (Study 2). Both theoretical and practical implications of this finding are discussed.     

心理距离与建构水平的双向作用关系

心理距离概念源于时间建构理论,以自我为中心,参照点是此时此地自己的直接经验,并沿不同维度向外扩展,形成通常所认为的时间、空间、社会距离和假设性四个维度。本文述评了心理距离与建构水平的双向作用关系及其产生原因,即远心理距离使人采用核心、去背景化特征表征事物,近心理距离使人采用外围、背景化特征表征事物;反之,高水平建构使人感知到远心理距离,低水平建构使人感知到近心理距离。未来研究应关注非自我参照点的客观距离与建构水平的关系,以及心理距离与建构水平关系的心理物理学研究等。     

The effects of time perspective and level of construal on social distance

Psychological causes of social distance were examined from the perspective of Construal Level Theory (CLT; Liberman, Trope, & Stephan, 2007), which predicts that temporal distance from and abstract construal of a social target would create perception of social distance. Our studies demonstrate that expectations for temporally remote (versus proximal) social interaction produce greater social distance from a target person, measured as reduced familiarity (Study 1) and as reduced similarity to the self (Study 2). We also show that a more abstract, higher level construal of a social target results in less familiarity (Study 3) and in less allocation of resources (Study 4). The research sheds light on how social closeness can be promoted or hindered by previously unaddressed psychological factors.     

时间距离提高伦理判断

本文从识解水平理论角度研究问题表征对伦理判断的影响。本文推断,事件的时间距离使得人们更容易形成高识解表征,能更好地辨别决策困境中的伦理原则;未来结果考虑特征高的管理者更关注决策的长期后果,也倾向于维护伦理原则。研究用两个实验递进验证了假设。139位大学生被试参加了实验1,结果支持了假设;实验2采用92位MBA学生的样本重复检验结论,并进一步验证未来结果考虑如何调节影响时间距离与伦理判断之间的关系。     

MINIMIZING THE PERVASIVENESS OF WOMEN'S PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION

Given the Rejection-Identification Model ( Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999 ), which shows that perceiving discrimination to be pervasive is a negative experience, it was suggested that there would be conditions under which women would instead minimize the pervasiveness of discrimination. Study 1 ( N = 91) showed that when women envisioned themselves in a situation of academic discrimination, they defined it as pervasive, but when they experienced a similar laboratory simulation of academic discrimination, its pervasiveness was minimized. Study 2 ( N = 159) showed that women who envisioned themselves experiencing discrimination minimized its pervasiveness more so than women reading about discrimination happening to someone else. Further, mediation analysis showed that minimizing the pervasiveness enhanced positive affect about personal discrimination. Implications for minimizing on both an individual and social level are discussed.     

Subjective well‐being and valuation of future health states: Discrepancies between anticipated and experienced life satisfaction

One way of informing health policy decisions is to ask people about the impact that different health states would have on their future subjective well‐being. The present research explored the relation between anticipated and experienced changes in health‐related subjective well‐being, and examined whether affective forecasting errors could be reduced by psychological distancing manipulations. Using survey methodology, we tested whether people can accurately estimate the impact of different possible health states on their subjective well‐being. We also manipulated psychological distance: Forecasts were made about present self, future self, or others. Based on construal level theory and past work on affective forecasting errors, our prediction was that increasing psychological distance may reduce the mismatch between anticipated and experienced impact of health states on subjective well‐being. We found that the impact of ill health on subjective well‐being was greatly overpredicted and that this overprediction was not eliminated when participants were asked to make predictions about themselves in the future or about other people. Consistent with past work, we found that our participants correctly expected that their subjective well‐being would deteriorate more if they experienced the highest levels of mental illness as compared to the highest intensities of pain or most severe limitations to physical functioning.     

Mere physical distance and integrative agreements: When more space improves negotiation outcomes

We examined the effects of negotiating non-face-to-face with someone that is physically nearby versus faraway on integrative (mutually beneficial) agreements. Across Studies 1 and 2, we found that individuals who negotiated with another person that they believed was physically faraway (several thousand feet away) rather than nearby (a few feet away) attained more integrative agreements (higher joint outcome, more Pareto efficient agreements). In Study 3, we found that the effect of different magnitudes of physical distance between negotiators on integrative agreements depended on negotiators' construal level: individuals who negotiated with another person who was purportedly farther away achieved more integrative agreements when their level of construal was not constrained, but had no effect when they adopted a high-level of construal. The implications for non-face-to-face communication are discussed.     

The peculiar longevity of things not so bad

Abstract— Intense hedonic states trigger psychological processes that are designed to attenuate them, and thus intense states may abate more quickly than mild states. Because people are unaware of these psychological processes, they may mistakenly expect intense states to last longer than mild ones. In Study 1, participants predicted that the more they initially disliked a transgressor, the longer their dislike would last. In Study 2, participants predicted that their dislike for a transgressor who hurt them a lot would last longer than their dislike for a transgressor who hurt them a little, but precisely the opposite was the case. In Study 3, participants predicted that their dislike for a transgressor who hurt them a lot would last longer than their dislike for a transgressor who hurt someone else a lot, but precisely the opposite was the case. These errors of prediction are discussed as instances of a more general phenomenon known as the region-β paradox.     

Engaging in self‐regulation results in low‐level construals

Previous research has suggested that self‐regulation results in low‐level construals but has inferred construal levels after self‐regulation only indirectly, through construal‐dependent judgments and choices. In the present paper, we demonstrate a direct link between engaging in self‐regulation and low‐level construals, by manipulating self‐regulation and subsequently assessing construal levels using well‐established and straightforward measures of construal level in three studies. Participants who engaged in self‐regulation subsequently provided lower egocentric spatial distance estimates (Studies 1A and 1B), formed more groups when categorizing objects (Study 2), and used more concrete language when describing cartoon main characters' behavior (Study 3) than participants who did not engage in self‐regulation. These findings provide direct evidence that low‐level construals result from engaging in self‐regulation. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.