Evaluations in Their Social Context: Distance Regulates Consistency and Context Dependence

Abstract

When and why do people's likes and dislikes flexibly tune to the current context, and when do they remain consistent? Ideas about flexibility and consistency have permeated the attitude literature throughout its history. Building on the notion that both flexibility and consistency in evaluative responding can be highly functional as well as highly social, this paper considers the role of distance in guiding people's evaluations to incorporate specific and individualized information that helps immerse them in their current social environment, versus broad and general information that helps them reach beyond their current context and relate to things outside of it. Next, the paper reviews research supporting this perspective, focusing on its implications for understanding how people's evaluations help them tune into different aspects of their social environment -those that tend to be specific to a particular context, and those that tend to be consistently encountered across contexts. The described studies suggest that distance regulates susceptibility to specific and general social influences, as well as the extent to which people's evaluations reflect broad and socially shared morals, values, and ideological principles.We often think of our attitudes as enduring and consistent aspects of ourselves -whether those attitudes include a deep and abiding love of chocolate, a moral conviction about a social policy, or heartfelt agreement with a political group's positions. Yet considerable research suggests that our evaluations can also shift quite fluidly in response to the immediate situation (e.g.

Cancer beliefs and prevention policies: comparing Canadian decision-maker and general population views

“…This brokering of evidence may help each party become more aware of the other's needs and ultimately shape the healthpromoting activities policy influencers choose to undertake in their organizations [75]. Moreover, research shows that knowledge brokers can help to mitigate the influence of ideological belief on policy support by addressing policy influencers' particular context [33,34]. Knowing the KAB of particular sectors of policy influencers could be instrumental in tailoring messages to address knowledge gaps and foster positive attitudes toward cancer prevention policy.…”

“…Political commitment to implementing policies for cancer prevention thus requires knowledge of the issue as well as evidence of policy effectiveness and sustained public benefit. Attitude, as positive or negative evaluation of healthy public policy, is central to the issue of political commitment [26,33]. Cohen [34] demonstrated experimentally that attitudes serve the social function of self-identification with a group, by showing that research participants' attitude toward hypothetical policy proposals shifted according to the political ideology attributed to them.…”

“…Political ideology about healthy public policy, in turn, is founded on policy influencers' sets of beliefs; specifically, individual versus societal attribution of responsibility for cancer prevention [35]. Moreover, beliefs as ideological constructs inform social group orientation and thus engender the positive or negative attitudes that drive political commitment [33]. Policy influencers are also influenced by the knowledge and beliefs of the general public [25,26,36].…”

A construal level approach to understanding interpersonal processes

“…Although there are contexts in which individuals are more influenced by anecdotal information, even to the disregard of aggregate base rates (i.e., base-rate neglect; Kahneman & Tversky, 1973), in other contexts, individuals may rely more on aggregate, statistical information (e.g., Amazon star ratings; Ledgerwood, Wakslak, & Wang, 2010). Importantly, researchers have identified that the influence of these two sources of information in decision-making may vary with construal (Ledgerwood, Trope, & Chaiken, 2010;Ledgerwood, Wakslak, & Wang, 2010; for a review, see Ledgerwood, 2014).…”

Does temporal distance influence abstraction? A large pre-registered experiment

“…In their 2015 metaanalysis, Soderberg and colleagues synthesized 125 studies with 310 effect sizes estimating the effect of psychological distance on abstraction (Soderberg, Callahan, Kochersberger, Amit, & Ledgerwood, 2015), and the literature has only grown since. Researchers have also hypothesized and tested a wide variety of implications that the effect of psychological distance on abstraction might have for downstream outcomes in different topic areas, from counterfactual thinking to mimicry and from self-complexity to health behavior (e.g., Choi, Park, & Oh, 2012;Genschow, Hansen, Wanke, & Trope, 2019;Ledgerwood, 2014;Rim & Summervile, 2014;Wakslak, Nussbaum, Liberman, & Trope, 2008; see Soderberg et al, 2015, for a meta-analytic synthesis of 426 effect sizes across 179 studies testing the effects of psychological distance on various downstream consequences of abstraction).…”