The Roles of Mental Construal Level Theory in the Promotion of University Students' Pro-environmental Behaviors

Although green technological innovation is designed to combat climate change, recent research suggests that increased attention to technological innovations might decrease climate change risk perception and reduce pro-environmental behaviors due to the feeling of being assured, which is referred to as risk compensation behavior. Although there has been a growing interest in reducing the risk compensation effect related to climate change, the academic literature in this area is very limited. In this study, we propose a psychological intervention to mitigate a sample of university students' (N = 1,500) irrational response to green technological innovation so as to promote their pro-environmental behaviors. Our experiments identify students' mental construal level as an important psychological factor that, when combined with a proper message framing strategy of introducing new green technologies, can remedy their irrational response to new green technologies. Our findings suggest that highlighting the new technology as playing a preventive/promotional role related to climate change can mitigate risk compensation behavior and eventually promote students' pro-environmental behaviors when they are at a high/low mental construal level.

GRAMMATICAL SCHEMAS OF SECONDARY LINGUISTIC INTERPRETATION

The author analyses grammatical forms of linguistic cognition which are used for primary and secondary interpretation of the world in the process of its mental construal in language, i.e. cognitive schemas of direct interpretation of variety of objects, events and of their characteristics as they are perceived in the world around (primary interpretation), on the one hand, and those of interpretation of previously gained and verbalized conventional knowledge about the world, on the other. He argues that structuring world and world knowledge in the processes of conceptualization and categorization is always interpretative and follows some general, or conventional, and specific, or individual, cognitive schemas. This argument is derived from the author-suggested three-member pattern of language functions, claiming ‘the interpretive function’ to be a basic one along with the cognitive and communicative functions. It is the interpretive function of language that requires a broad choice of schemas to structure the world and the world knowledge and to trigger basic processes of linguistic interpretation. Among the conventional grammatical schemas employed in these processes are certain types of concepts and categories, propositional, metaphoric, and metonymic models represented by different types of syntactic structures, simple or complex, as well as the structure of various types of texts. Individually specific can be human particular systems of conceptualization and categorization, complex propositions, newly-construed metaphors, and modified conventional schemas which are specifically represented in language.

Construal Matching in Online Search: Applying Text Analysis to Illuminate the Consumer Decision Journey

As consumers move through their decision journey, they adopt different goals (e.g., transactional vs. informational). In this research, the authors propose that consumer goals can be detected through textual analysis of online search queries and that both marketers and consumers can benefit when paid search results and advertisements match consumer search–related goals. In bridging construal level theory and textual analysis, the authors show that consumers at different stages of the decision journey tend to assume different levels of mental construal, or mindsets (i.e., abstract vs. concrete). They find evidence of a fluency-driven matching effect in online search such that when consumer mindsets are more abstract (more concrete), consumers generate textual search queries that use more abstract (more concrete) language. Furthermore, they are more likely to click on search engine results and ad content that matches their mindset, thereby experiencing more search satisfaction and perceiving greater goal progress. Six empirical studies, including a pilot study, a survey, three lab experiments, and a field experiment involving over 128,000 ad impressions provide support for this construal matching effect in online search.

Linguistic Concreteness of True and False Intentions: A Mega-Analysis

Our aim was to examine how people communicate their true and false intentions. Based on construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010), we predicted that statements of true intentions would be more concretely phrased than statements of false intentions. True intentions refer to more likely future events than false intentions, they should be mentally represented at a lower level of mental construal. This should be mirrored in more concrete language use. Transcripts of truthful and deceptive statements about intentions from six previous experimental studies (total N = 528) were analyzed using two automated verbal content analysis approaches: a folk-conceptual measure of concreteness (Brysbaert, Warriner, and Kuperman, 2014) and linguistic category model scoring (Seih, Beier, & Pennebaker, 2017). Contrary to our hypotheses, veracity did not predict statements’ concreteness scores, suggesting that automated verbal analysis of linguistic concreteness is not a viable deception-detection technique for intentions.

Having Control Over and Above Situations: The Influence of Elevated Viewpoints on Risk Taking

This article examines how consumers’ exposure to the viewpoint of high versus low vertical position changes their risk-taking behavior. The author proposes that consumers’ views of scenery from a high physical elevation induce an illusory sense of control, which in turn intensifies risk taking. Multiple studies show that exposure to the viewpoint of high vertical positions increases risk taking in both laboratory settings (Studies 1a, 1b, and 1c) and real settings (Study 4). In addition, the author demonstrates that an illusory sense of control mediates the effect of an elevated viewpoint on risk taking (Study 2) and that the effect of elevation on risk taking is attenuated when people use a low-level mental construal to process visual information (Study 3).

The Role of Construal Level in Message Effects Research: A Review and Future Directions

Construal level theory is a recent psychological theory that examines the relationship between psychological distance and mental construal. However, the theory’s implications for message effects research requires more attention. Construal level theory can guide new hypotheses that test the persuasiveness of certain combinations of message features and tailoring messages to different individual orientations. This is possible as the theory may reveal underlying similarities across disparate message topics, design elements, and message processing styles. Core principles of construal level theory are explicated, and message effects research areas that may benefit from its propositions are reviewed and elaborated upon. Finally, caveats of applying the theory to message effects research and future directions are discussed.

Improving temporal consistency of preferences: The influence of mental construal

Majority of the current literature on mental construal has focused on effects of varying construal levels on preference shifts whereas this research investigates the influence of mental construal on the change of preference consistency over time. Building on construal level theory, we propose that high-level construal, which creates abstract, and decontextualized mental representations, leads individuals to more consistent preferences than low-level construal, which creates concrete, and contextualized mental representations. Furthermore we examine the effect of having a matching versus non-matching construal level at two different evaluation instances, on achieving greater extents of consistency. To test this prediction a mixed experimental design is employed, in which participants evaluated electronic products at two different sessions. It is demonstrated that when participants have the same construal level at two points in time, their evaluations become similar since they mentally construe the objects in the same way whereas when the construal level differs at these two points, participants focus on different aspects of the products, form different evaluations and have less consistent preferences.