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Affective forecasting
- Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
, 2003
"... It must be troubling for the god who loves you To ponder how much happier you'd be today Had you been able to glimpse your many futures. —Dennis (2001, p. 72) Foreseeing the future is one of the most appealing of all psychic powers. Who has not dreamed of making millions by predicting which new ..."
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Cited by 156 (11 self)
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It must be troubling for the god who loves you To ponder how much happier you'd be today Had you been able to glimpse your many futures. —Dennis (2001, p. 72) Foreseeing the future is one of the most appealing of all psychic powers. Who has not dreamed of making millions by predicting which new offering on Wall Street will be the next Microsoft and whether the Red Sox or Phillies will win the World Series? Seeing into the future would bring many advantages other than fattening our wallets, such as eliminating all decisionmaking angst. Rather than worrying about whether we are best suited for a career as a lawyer or an interior designer, whether we should marry Sam or Harry, or whether we should buy our neighbor's 1992 Volvo, we could simply glance into our crystal balls and see how these various options would pan out. People do not have crystal balls, of course (at least not accurate ones) and thus must prognosticate as best they can, based on what they know in the present. There is a great deal of research on how people make predictions about the future, including decision making under uncertainty (e.g.,
N.: Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance
- 2010); 463a, ISSN
"... People are capable of thinking about the future, the past, remote locations, another person’s perspective, and counterfactual alternatives. Without denying the uniqueness of each process, it is proposed that they constitute different forms of traversing psychological distance. Psychological distance ..."
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Cited by 138 (5 self)
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People are capable of thinking about the future, the past, remote locations, another person’s perspective, and counterfactual alternatives. Without denying the uniqueness of each process, it is proposed that they constitute different forms of traversing psychological distance. Psychological distance is egocentric: Its reference point is the self in the here and now, and the different ways in which an object might be removed from that point—in time, in space, in social distance, and in hypotheticality—constitute different distance dimensions. Transcending the self in the here and now entails mental construal, and the farther removed an object is from direct experience, the higher (more abstract) the level of construal of that object. Supporting this analysis, research shows (a) that the various distances are cognitively related to each other, (b) that they similarly influence and are influenced by level of mental construal, and (c) that they similarly affect prediction, preference, and action.
You Focus on the Forest When You’re in Charge of the Trees: Power Priming and Abstract Information Processing
"... Elevated power increases the psychological distance one feels from others, and this distance, according to construal level theory (Y. Trope & N. Liberman, 2003), should lead to more abstract information processing. Thus, high power should be associated with more abstract thinking—focusing on pri ..."
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Cited by 77 (23 self)
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Elevated power increases the psychological distance one feels from others, and this distance, according to construal level theory (Y. Trope & N. Liberman, 2003), should lead to more abstract information processing. Thus, high power should be associated with more abstract thinking—focusing on primary aspects of stimuli and detecting patterns and structure to extract the gist, as well as categorizing stimuli at a higher level—relative to low power. In 6 experiments involving both conceptual and perceptual tasks, priming high power led to more abstract processing than did priming low power, even when this led to worse performance. Experiment 7 revealed that in line with past neuropsychological research on abstract thinking, priming high power also led to greater relative right-hemispheric activation.
The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure
- Psychological Bulletin
, 2007
"... Procrastination is a prevalent and pernicious form of self-regulatory failure that is not entirely understood. Hence, the relevant conceptual, theoretical, and empirical work is reviewed, drawing upon correlational, experimental, and qualitative findings. A meta-analysis of procrastination’s possibl ..."
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Cited by 69 (0 self)
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Procrastination is a prevalent and pernicious form of self-regulatory failure that is not entirely understood. Hence, the relevant conceptual, theoretical, and empirical work is reviewed, drawing upon correlational, experimental, and qualitative findings. A meta-analysis of procrastination’s possible causes and effects, based on 691 correlations, reveals that neuroticism, rebelliousness, and sensation seeking show only a weak connection. Strong and consistent predictors of procrastination were task aversiveness, task delay, selfefficacy, and impulsiveness, as well as conscientiousness and its facets of self-control, distractibility, organization, and achievement motivation. These effects prove consistent with temporal motivation theory, an integrative hybrid of expectancy theory and hyperbolic discounting. Continued research into procrastination should not be delayed, especially because its prevalence appears to be growing.
Self-Regulation and Personality: How Interventions Increase Regulatory Success, and How Depletion Moderates the Effects of Traits on Behavior
"... ABSTRACT Self-regulation is a highly adaptive, distinctively human trait that enables people to override and alter their responses, including changing themselves so as to live up to social and other standards. Recent evidence indicates that self-regulation often consumes a limited resource, akin to ..."
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Cited by 60 (5 self)
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ABSTRACT Self-regulation is a highly adaptive, distinctively human trait that enables people to override and alter their responses, including changing themselves so as to live up to social and other standards. Recent evidence indicates that self-regulation often consumes a limited resource, akin to energy or strength, thereby creating a temporary state of ego depletion. This article summarizes recent evidence indicating that regular exercises in self-regulation can produce broad improvements in self-regulation (like strengthening a muscle), making people less vulnerable to ego depletion. Furthermore, it shows that ego depletion moderates the effects of many traits on behavior, particularly such that wide differences in socially disapproved motivations produce greater differences in behavior when ego depletion weakens the customary inner restraints. Self-regulation is an important personality process by which people seek to exert control over their thoughts, their feelings, their impulses and appetites, and their task performances. The human capacity for self-regulation appears to be much more extensive than what is found in other animals, which may suggest that the evolutionary pressures that guided the selection of traits that make up human nature, such as participation in cultural groups, found self-regulation to be especially adaptive and powerful (Baumeister, 2005). If so, then self-regulation may be one of the most distinctively human traits. Even if human beings are capable of more self-regulation than other animals, however, their capacity is far less than what many Correspondence concerning this article may be sent to R. Baumeister, Department
Temporal construal effects on abstract and concrete thinking: Consequences for insight and creative cognition
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
, 2004
"... Six studies investigate whether and how distant future time perspective facilitates abstract thinking and impedes concrete thinking by altering the level at which mental representations are construed. In Experiments 1–3, participants who envisioned their lives and imagined themselves engaging in a t ..."
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Cited by 59 (5 self)
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Six studies investigate whether and how distant future time perspective facilitates abstract thinking and impedes concrete thinking by altering the level at which mental representations are construed. In Experiments 1–3, participants who envisioned their lives and imagined themselves engaging in a task 1 year later as opposed to the next day subsequently performed better on a series of insight tasks. In Experiments 4 and 5 a distal perspective was found to improve creative generation of abstract solutions. Moreover, Experiment 5 demonstrated a similar effect with temporal distance manipulated indirectly, by making participants imagine their lives in general a year from now versus tomorrow prior to performance. In Experiment 6, distant time perspective undermined rather than enhanced analytical problem solving. Insight and creativity have commonly been thought of as per-sonality traits (see, e.g., Eysenck, 1993; Simonton, 1991). How-ever, over the past several years, social psychologists have also identified a range of situational factors that significantly influence insight and creativity, suggesting that they vary within as well as between individuals and that they are very much responsive to the social context. For example, in conditions of situationally induced positive mood, individuals have been found to demonstrate in-creased creativity relative to those in a neutral mood (e.g., Isen,
Flawed self-assessment: Implications for health, education, and the workplace
- Psychological Science in the Public Interest
"... SUMMARY—Research from numerous corners of psycho-logical inquiry suggests that self-assessments of skill and character are often flawed in substantive and systematic ways.We review empirical findings on the imperfect nature of self-assessment and discuss implications for three real-world domains: he ..."
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Cited by 58 (1 self)
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SUMMARY—Research from numerous corners of psycho-logical inquiry suggests that self-assessments of skill and character are often flawed in substantive and systematic ways.We review empirical findings on the imperfect nature of self-assessment and discuss implications for three real-world domains: health, education, and the workplace. In general, people’s self-views hold only a tenuous to modest relationship with their actual behavior and per-formance. The correlation between self-ratings of skill and actual performance in many domains is moderate to mea-ger—indeed, at times, other people’s predictions of a per-son’s outcomes prove more accurate than that person’s self-predictions. In addition, people overrate themselves. On average, people say that they are ‘‘above average’ ’ in skill (a conclusion that defies statistical possibility), over-
Spatial distance and mental construal of social events
- Psychological Science
, 2006
"... ABSTRACT—Construal-level theory proposes that increasing the reported spatial distance of events leads individuals to represent the events by their central, abstract, global features (high-level construal) rather than by their peripheral, concrete, local features (low-level construal). Results of tw ..."
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Cited by 58 (21 self)
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ABSTRACT—Construal-level theory proposes that increasing the reported spatial distance of events leads individuals to represent the events by their central, abstract, global features (high-level construal) rather than by their peripheral, concrete, local features (low-level construal). Results of two experiments indicated that participants preferred to identify actions as ends rather than as means to a greater extent when these actions occurred at a spatially distant, as opposed to near, location (Study 1), and that they used more abstract language to recall spatially distant events, compared with near events (Study 2). These findings suggest that spatially distant events are associated with high-level construals, and that spatial distance can be conceptualized as a dimension of psychological distance. An extensive literature has examined how individuals represent spatial distances of objects (e.g., Tversky, 2003, 2005). Research has shown, for example, that representations of spatially near objects are linked to body orientation, referencing visual and proprioceptive input (e.g., Bryant & Tversky, 1999). Representations of spatially distant objects, in contrast, rely on schematic knowledge, eliminating the need to encode all possible metric distances, but also leading to systematic biases in judgments of spatial distance (e.g., Huttenlocher, Hedges, & Duncan, 1991; McNamara, 1986). Research on spatial distance, however, has yet to be extended to the representation of social events or objects. Given that individuals frequently think and make decisions about social events or objects that are reported to be located at spatially near or distant locations, it is important to address what influence this information has on mental representations and decisions. In the present article, we examine how the meaning of the same social event changes depending Address correspondence to Kentaro Fujita or Marlone D. Henderson,
Episodic simulation of future events: Concepts, data and applications
, 2008
"... This article focuses on the neural and cognitive processes that support imagining or simulating future events, a topic that has recently emerged in the forefront of cognitive neuroscience. We begin by considering concepts of simulation from a number of areas of psychology and cognitive neuroscience ..."
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Cited by 45 (5 self)
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This article focuses on the neural and cognitive processes that support imagining or simulating future events, a topic that has recently emerged in the forefront of cognitive neuroscience. We begin by considering concepts of simulation from a number of areas of psychology and cognitive neuroscience in order to place our use of the term in a broader context. We then review neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and cognitive studies that have examined future-event simulation and its relation to episodic memory. This research supports the idea that simulating possible future events depends on much of the same neural machinery, referred to here as a core network, as does remembering past events. After discussing several theoretical accounts of the data, we consider applications of work on episodic simulation for research concerning clinical populations suffering from anxiety or depression. Finally, we consider other aspects of future-oriented thinking that we think are related to episodic simulation, including planning, prediction, and remembering intentions. These processes together comprise what we have termed “the prospective brain, ” whose primary function is to use past experiences to anticipate future events. Key words: episodic memory; simulation of future events; neuroimaging; constructive memory;
Seeing the forest when entry is unlikely: Probability and the mental representation of events
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
, 2006
"... Conceptualizing probability as psychological distance, the authors draw on construal level theory (Y. Trope & N. Liberman, 2003) to propose that decreasing an event’s probability leads individuals to represent the event by its central, abstract, general features (high-level construal) rather tha ..."
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Cited by 43 (14 self)
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Conceptualizing probability as psychological distance, the authors draw on construal level theory (Y. Trope & N. Liberman, 2003) to propose that decreasing an event’s probability leads individuals to represent the event by its central, abstract, general features (high-level construal) rather than by its peripheral, concrete, specific features (low-level construal). Results indicated that when reported probabilities of events were low rather than high, participants were more broad (Study 1) and inclusive (Study 2) in their categorization of objects, increased their preference for general rather than specific activity descriptions (Study 3), segmented ongoing behavior into fewer units (Study 4), were more successful at abstracting visual information (Study 5), and were less successful at identifying details missing within a coherent visual whole (Study 6). Further, after exposure to low-probability as opposed to high-probability phrases, participants increasingly preferred to identify actions in ends-related rather than means-related terms (Study 7). Implications for probability assessment and choice under uncertainty are discussed.
