The influence of abstract and concrete mindsets on anticipating and guiding others' self-regulatory efforts

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Abstract

To investigate how people anticipate and attempt to shape others' self-regulatory efforts, this work examined the impact of abstract and concrete mindsets on attention to goal-relevant aspects of others' situations. An abstract (relative to a concrete) mindset, by making accessible the cognitive operation of considering activities' purpose (versus process) was predicted to focus attention on how others' self-evaluative situations could impact others' long-term aims of self-knowledge and self-improvement, thus facilitating the anticipation and preference that others pursue accurate, even self-critical, feedback. Participants in an abstract (relative to a concrete) mindset both anticipated (Experiment 1) and suggested (Experiments 2a and b) that others pursue realistic rather than overly positive self-relevant information, with the latter effect apparently explained by the salience of abstract versus concrete goal-relevant features of others' situations (Experiment 2b). Implications for self-regulatory mindsets, as well as for interpersonal relations, are discussed.

Introduction

Knowing a person's goals facilitates understanding and predicting the person's behaviors. Accordingly, not only researchers of personality (e.g., Adler, 1927; Cantor, 1994; Emmons, 1989; Grant & Dweck, 1999; Mischel, 1973) but also ordinary observers seek the goals underlying others' behaviors and rely on goal-related assumptions to predict others' future behaviors (e.g., Bassili, 1989; Read & Miller, 1993). Moreover, as work supervisors, teachers, siblings, caring friends, and parents can attest, people often must guide others toward appropriate goals in given situations. How do people meet the related challenges of anticipating and guiding others' self-regulatory efforts?

Answering both questions appears to depend substantially on how people view others' situations. Situational inducements, potential rewards versus penalties for performing particular acts, help people identify the goals and aims likely underlying others' behaviors (Chun, Spiegel, & Kruglanski, 2002; Trope, 1986; Trope & Alfieri, 1997).1 Even without observing others' behaviors, moreover, people use situational cues to determine the goals others' situations afford attaining (Gibson, 1979/1986; Proffitt, Stefanucci, Banton, & Epstein, 2003; Rochat, 1995; Stroffregen, Gorday, Sheng, & Flynn, 1999). Thus, people expect others to pursue different goals in different situations, such as job interviews, fraternity parties, and first dates (Cantor, Mischel, & Schwartz, 1982). In much the same vein, people guide others toward goals sensitive to situational constraints (for reviews, see Andersen & Chen, 2002; Moretti & Higgins, 1999b). Parents' influences on their children's academic performance, for example, are contextualized, with some inspiring stronger efforts in creative situations and others inspiring stronger efforts in analytic situations (Shah, 2003). Situational cues thus appear central to anticipating and guiding others' self-regulatory efforts.

Any situation, however, likely contains multiple goal-relevant cues, each of which can be construed in myriad ways (cf. Brown, 1958). What determines the impact of one's particular construal of another's situation on one's inferences concerning the other's self-regulatory efforts? Arguably the most fundamental task of self-regulation is balancing abstract, long-term aims with immediate, concrete experiences, as when a child delays enjoying a cookie to receive two later, a smoker eschews a cigarette in the service of better health, or a student endures a rigorous study session on the road to a better grade (e.g., Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989; Rachlin, 2000; Trope & Fishbach, 2000). Accordingly, construing others' situations in terms of the abstract aims versus immediate experiences they afford attaining, by highlighting quite distinct situational inducements, should influence particularly potently one's anticipation and guidance of others' self-regulatory efforts. Focusing on the low-level, concrete experiences afforded by another's situation should lead one to both expect and prefer that the other pursue the most comfortable and feasible means of action, given that rewards and punishments associated with the process of the activity would be most salient. Focusing on the high-level, abstract aims afforded by another's situation, in contrast, should lead one to both expect and prefer that the other pursue the action providing the greatest long-term benefits, given that rewards and punishments associated with the ultimate aim of the activity would be most salient (cf., Liberman & Trope, 1998; Vallacher & Kaufman, 1996). Previously unexplored determinants of such construals, we suggest, are abstract and concrete mindsets.

Any action can be construed at varying levels of abstraction, from low levels, specifying how it is performed, to high levels, specifying why it is performed (Vallacher and Wegner, 1985, Vallacher and Wegner, 1987). High-level, why, construals represent the action's purpose and thus are of primary concern when contemplating an action. Low-level, how, construals represent the action's process and thus are of secondary concern when contemplating an action (Trope & Liberman, 2003). Locking a door, for example, could be construed as “turning a key,” a relatively low-level identification of the process of how one locks a door, or as “securing one's home,” a relatively high-level identification of the purpose of why one locks a door (Vallacher & Wegner, 1989). Focusing directly on a situation's low-level or high-level contents, as when an interaction partner focuses on (low-level) speech utterances or (high-level) interaction aims, directly influences one's construal of the situation (e.g., Vallacher, Wegner, McMahan, Cotter, & Larsen, 1992).

Independent of information specific to a particular situation, however, the accessibility of cognitive operations can influence more generally how new information is processed in new situations. As first demonstrated early last century, encountering tasks requiring the use of a particular cognitive operation, such as inverting letters in a particular way to solve anagrams, increases the operation's likelihood of usage on upcoming tasks (e.g., Ach, 1910; Külpe, 1904; Rees & Israel, 1935). Examining the role that these differing accessibilities of cognitive operations, contemporarily termed mindsets, play in self-regulation, recent work has exploited Heckhausen's (1986) parsing of self-regulation into four distinct phases: (a) deliberating whether to take action, (b) planning action implementation, (c) taking action, and (d) evaluating action. Focusing on the first two, pre-actional phases, this work posits that each phase requires its own distinct cognitive operations, which, once accessible due to recent usage, color how people interpret newly encountered information (Gollwitzer, 1990; Gollwitzer & Bayer, 1999). In one study, for instance, participants either were held in a pre-decisional, deliberative state or were pushed to make a decision and to plan implementation (Gollwitzer, Heckhausen, & Ratajczak, 1990). On a test of their memory concerning a subsequent, unrelated task, participants in the deliberative condition recalled greater amounts of deliberative information, whereas participants in the implementational condition recalled greater amounts of implementation-related information. Such findings show that making accessible distinct cognitive operations can orient one towards congruent information, across different content domains.

These considerations imply that thinking about the abstract aims (versus concrete procedures) related to one activity or situation could increase the accessibility of the general cognitive operation of considering activities' purpose (versus process), thus coloring one's construal of a newly encountered activity or situation. Given the assumption that balancing long-term, abstract aims and immediate, concrete experiences constitutes the core essence of self-regulation (e.g., Mischel et al., 1989; Rachlin, 2000; Trope & Fishbach, 2000), this hypothesized applicability of an abstract or concrete mindset across different content domains holds particular relevance for anticipating and guiding the self-regulatory efforts of others, who, because they are others (and not oneself) likely face situations non-identical to one's own. Might considering why rather than how to improve one's own health, for example, influence whether one construes another person's non-health-related situation in terms of its impact on abstract, long-term aims rather than on immediate, concrete experiences?

Pursuing these questions requires an approach different from earlier work on deliberative and implementational mindsets (Gollwitzer, 1990; Gollwitzer & Bayer, 1999). Consistent with the current aims, adopting a deliberative mindset, that is, considering potential pros versus cons of particular courses of action, should highlight the abstract, high-level value of activities, and adopting an implementational mindset, that is, planning how to carry out activities, should highlight the concrete, low-level procedures that comprise activities. However, reflecting the conceptual attribution of deliberative and implementational mindsets to naturally occurring action phases (Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1987), a deliberative mindset additionally entails being undecided about an issue, and an implementational mindset additionally entails being decided about an issue (Gollwitzer, 1990). Independent of any effects of abstract versus concrete construals reflecting the accessibility of cognitive operations, then, decisional status alone could impact motivation-related variables. Once decided upon an issue, that is, people favor information supporting their decision over information challenging it (e.g., Brehm & Cohen, 1962; Kunda, 1990; Zakay & Tsal, 1993). Importantly, moreover, such motivational effects can carry over to newly encountered situations. Accordingly, Taylor and Gollwitzer (1995) showed that participants in an implementational mindset (who had planned the implementation of a previously decided-upon course of action) viewed objective risk factors more favorably (i.e., as less likely to impact them) than did participants in a deliberative mindset (who had deliberated whether or not to undertake a previously undecided course of action). Gollwitzer and Kinney (1989) suggest that such effects indicate that implementational mindset manipulations generate broad determination to complete whatever task may be at hand, thus fostering the illusion that situational affordances are overly supportive of whatever goals one may hold. Further supporting a motivational interpretation, implementational mindset manipulations increase cognitive dissonance effects, fostering greater devaluation of non-chosen alternatives and greater valuation of chosen alternatives (Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2002). Extant mindsets effects, then, appear to depend not only cognitive operations made accessible through thinking abstractly versus concretely but also on motivation generated through commitment to decisions.

In the experiments described herein, we instilled general abstract and concrete mindsets independently of participants' decisional statuses. We next assessed participants' anticipations (Experiments 1 and 2) and preferred guidance (Experiment 2) of others' self-regulatory efforts. The self-regulatory domain upon which we focused was self-evaluation. The process of evaluating oneself can be considered a self-regulatory tradeoff between seeking immediate, concrete benefits, through acquiring positive, pleasant-to-receive feedback, and seeking longer-term, more abstract benefits, through acquiring accurate feedback that may be unpleasant to receive but quite useful for attempts at self-improvement (Freitas, Salovey, & Liberman, 2001; Mischel, Ebbesen, & Zeiss, 1973; Trope & Neter, 1994). We tested whether one's general mindset could influence the relative salience of these concrete versus abstract situational inducements present in others' situations. If an abstract mindset highlights the high-level, abstract aims afforded by another's self-evaluative situation, then undergoing an abstract mindset manipulation should lead one to both expect and suggest that the other pursue accurate, realistic information, because such information would provide the greatest abstract, long-term benefits. If a concrete mindset, in contrast, highlights the low-level, concrete experiences afforded by another's situation, then undergoing a concrete mindset manipulation should lead one to both expect and suggest that the other pursue positive feedback, because such information would provide the greatest immediate, concrete benefits.

Section snippets

Experiment 1

Participants assigned to an abstract mindset condition were directed to consider why they would engage in an activity (health improvement), whereas participants assigned to a concrete mindset condition were directed to consider how they would engage in the same activity. As illustrated in Fig. 1, structuring these thought exercises were diagrams requiring participants to think either: (a) increasingly abstractly about the activity, by successively indicating why they would engage in it as well

Experiment 2

Features of situations can directly activate goal representations (e.g., Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Trötschel, 2001; Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003). Accordingly, because any situation likely contains multiple goal-relevant features, we view the problem of understanding how people anticipate and guide others' self-regulatory efforts to depend critically on which features of others' situations people attend to. We suggest that an abstract mindset leads one to attend preferentially to

General discussion

Understanding and influencing others' goals and intentions are central to navigating everyday life, evident even among very young children and infants (e.g., Kuhlmeier, Wynn, & Bloom, 2003; Meltzoff, 1995; Montgomery, Moran, & Bach, 1996). Seeking to understand mechanisms underlying these processes, we examined the role that abstract and concrete mindsets play in directing attention to particular goal-relevant aspects of others' situations. We assume that people will both anticipate and suggest

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    We thank Ana Dı́az, Michelle Gomez, Jessica Velasquez, and Rosemary Ventura for invaluable assistance in the coding of free responses. Parts of this work were completed while pre-doctoral fellowships from the Ford Foundation and the Jacob K. Javits program supported the first author.

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