Construal levels and self-control.

Fujita, Kentaro; Trope, Yaacov; Liberman, Nira; Levin-Sagi, Maya

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.3.351

Cited by 1,021 publications

(1,212 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…High-level construal has also been implicated as beneficial for self-control: seeing the situation from a broader context helps to identify the presence of a conflict between long-term goals (e.g., being healthy) and short-term temptations. The result of this process is that the former becomes prioritized, enabling self-control (Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006). In one study, dieters were first instructed to mark the date on a calendar that either did or did not use a grid to separate the days of the month (narrow or wide frame, respectively).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scale and construal: How larger measurement units shrink length estimates and expand mental horizons

Maglio

Trope

2010

Psychon Bull Rev

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Scale can vary by requiring a different number of units to measure the same target. But what are the consequences of using fewer, larger units? We draw on past psychophysical research that shows how using fewer units reduces clutter in measurement, translating to shorter length estimates. Additionally, we propose that larger scale is associated with targets further from a person's immediate experience (i.e., psychologically distant) and higher order mental representation. Evidence from Study 1 indicates that framing a target as further away causes it to be estimated as shorter because people use larger units to measure it compared to when the same target is framed as nearby. Two subsequent studies suggest that direct manipulation of larger (versus smaller) measurement scale produces not only shorter length estimates, but also more distal timing judgments (Study 2) and abstract mental representation (Study 3). Implications for scale and level of mental construal are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scale and construal: How larger measurement units shrink length estimates and expand mental horizons

Maglio

Trope

2010

Psychon Bull Rev

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“…Here, we evaluate two alternative accounts of the robust neural effects observed in the why/how contrast. These alternatives are suggested by the hierarchical structure of human representations of action (Vallacher and Wegner, 1987;Kozak et al, 2006; see also Fujita et al, 2006;Trope and Liberman, 2010). To illustrate, consider the role that why and how questions play in navigating the levels of the conceptual action hierarchy in Figure 1A.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The neural basis of conceptualizing the same action at different levels of abstraction

Spunt

Kemmerer

Adolphs

2015

Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci

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People can conceptualize the same action (e.g. 'riding a bike') at different levels of abstraction (LOA), where higher LOAs specify the abstract motives that explain why the action is performed (e.g. 'getting exercise'), while lower LOAs specify the concrete steps that indicate how the action is performed (e.g. 'gripping handlebars'). Prior neuroimaging studies have shown that why and how questions about actions differentially activate two cortical networks associated with mental-state reasoning and action representation, respectively; however, it remains unknown whether this is due to the differential demands of the questions per se or to the shifts in LOA those questions produce. We conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants judged pairs of action phrases that varied in LOA and that could be framed either as a why question (Why ride a bike? Get exercise.) or a how question (How to get exercise? Ride a bike.). Question framing (why vs how) had no effect on activity in regions of the two networks. Instead, these regions uniquely tracked parametric variation in LOA, both across and within trials. This suggests that the human capacity to understand actions at different LOA is based in the relative activity of two cortical networks.

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“…In our study we included two different operationalizations of attentional breadth, the Global-Local and visuospatial training task, which may represent different kinds of attentional breadth. Global (or local) processing may reflect a high (or low) level of processing (Fujita, Trope, Liberman & Levin-Sagi, 2006;Hanif et al, 2012;van Dellen et al, 2012), whereas the target of the visuospatial attentional breadth training task pertains to the size of spatial perceptual attentional breadth. Though the narrowing effect in the Global-Local assessment task found in Experiment 2 and 3 which both included visuospatial attentional training may suggest a possibility that manipulation of visuospatial attention can be transferred to the global-local processing measurement, this was not the case for the broad training condition in these two experiments.…”

Section: Can Training Change Attentional Breadthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can training change attentional breadth? Failure to find transfer effects

Fang

Hoorelbeke

Bruyneel

et al. 2017

Psychological Research

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Recently, there is increasing interest in the causal relationship between attentional breadth and emotion regulation. To test this causal relationship, attentional breadth needs to be manipulated stringently. The aim of the current research was to establish whether visual attentional breadth could be manipulated through experimental training procedures. We conducted two single-session training experiments and one multiple-session training experiment, all of which contained pre-and post-training assessments to test the direct transfer effects of training on attentional breadth construed in different measures. For the first single-session training (Experiment 1), no training effects were found to transfer to the subsequent attentional breadth measures in terms of global-local processing preference. For the second single-session training (Experiment 2) and the five-day training (Experiment 3) which combined both trainings from Experiment 1 and 2, there were some indications that attentional breadth can be decreased, but there was no evidence that it could be increased neither in terms of global-local processing preference nor in terms of scope of visual perception. Bayesian analysis confirmed the null-hypothesis of no increase in attentional breadth through delivery of these training procedures. Therefore, our findings do not support the hypothesis that training variants of the Global-Local attentional breadth task or of the visuospatial attentional breadth task can stably alter attentional breadth in healthy students.Possible explanations and implications are discussed.

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Construal levels and self-control.

Cited by 1,021 publications

References 47 publications

Scale and construal: How larger measurement units shrink length estimates and expand mental horizons

Scale and construal: How larger measurement units shrink length estimates and expand mental horizons

The neural basis of conceptualizing the same action at different levels of abstraction

Can training change attentional breadth? Failure to find transfer effects

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