TY - JOUR
T1 - Beliefs About Abstraction
T2 - Low-Level and High-Level Construal Signal Different Lay Theories
AU - Crouzevialle, Marie
AU - Schmid, Petra C.
AU - Trope, Yaacov
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant P300P1_171486 awarded to Marie Crouzevialle. This work has been presented at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Academy ofManagement, 2020, as well at the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, 2021. The full material, instructions, and datasets are stored and available on Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13065938)
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Construal level theory identifies abstraction as the key process that guides the pursuit of distant goals and expands the scope of regulation beyond the here and now (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope et al., 2021). While low-level (concrete) construals are concrete representations that foster a narrow view on the immediate circumstances and allow people to focus on a small subset of concerns, high-level (abstract) construals enable people to consider variability and change by taking more distant targets into account. In the present research, we investigate how people associate construal level with lay theories and, in particular, how this association manifests in the inferences they draw about others. In line with predictions, results across eight experiments (N = 1, 110) show that people associate high-level construal with growth theories and low-level construal with fixed theories. Moreover, Studies 4 and 5 demonstrate that construal level can selectively influence a candidate’s employability, depending on the hiring company’s organizational mindset. Overall, this research points out the importance of investigating people’s beliefs about abstraction, as it highlights how low-level and high-level construals can communicate distinct traits, characteristics, or intentions to peers.
AB - Construal level theory identifies abstraction as the key process that guides the pursuit of distant goals and expands the scope of regulation beyond the here and now (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope et al., 2021). While low-level (concrete) construals are concrete representations that foster a narrow view on the immediate circumstances and allow people to focus on a small subset of concerns, high-level (abstract) construals enable people to consider variability and change by taking more distant targets into account. In the present research, we investigate how people associate construal level with lay theories and, in particular, how this association manifests in the inferences they draw about others. In line with predictions, results across eight experiments (N = 1, 110) show that people associate high-level construal with growth theories and low-level construal with fixed theories. Moreover, Studies 4 and 5 demonstrate that construal level can selectively influence a candidate’s employability, depending on the hiring company’s organizational mindset. Overall, this research points out the importance of investigating people’s beliefs about abstraction, as it highlights how low-level and high-level construals can communicate distinct traits, characteristics, or intentions to peers.
KW - Abstraction
KW - Construal level
KW - Lay theories of ability
KW - Motivation
KW - Person-organization fit
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U2 - 10.1037/xge0001332
DO - 10.1037/xge0001332
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85145855674
JO - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
JF - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
SN - 0096-3445
ER -