Explaining the Complex Effect of Construal Level on Moral and Political Attitudes

How Is Construal Level Related to Moral Attitudes?

Moral principles are higher-order, abstract ideals that are presumed to transcend different contexts. For example, killing is universally considered a violation of core moral values (e.g., Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). So a moral imperative such as “Thou shalt not kill” is an abstract ideal because it is assumed to apply to any situation, regardless of the circumstantial factors. According to CLT, when people have an abstract mind-set, they become more likely to emphasize these abstract values and ignore the contextual details.

However, contextual details sometimes matter. Killing is wrong, but what about killing in self-defense? A behavior that is normally considered to be a moral transgression could be rendered acceptable by the concrete details of a specific situation. According to CLT, a concrete mind-set emphasizes such contextual details, which might render moral transgressions relatively more acceptable.

Following this line of thought, Eyal, Liberman, and Trope (2008) proposed that psychological distance would lead to more extreme moral judgments. Among Israeli samples, they found that temporal and social distance led to harsher judgments of moral transgressions and more favorable evaluations of moral virtues. Some of the later research also yielded similar findings: Abstractness made negative evaluations of moral transgressions (e.g., stealing) and positive evaluations of virtuous behaviors (e.g., blood-donation intentions) more extreme among Swedish (Agerström & Björklund, 2009a, 2009b, 2013), Dutch (Lammers, 2012), Korean, and United States (U.S.) samples (Choi, Park, & Oh, 2012).

However, there were also contradictory findings. In an attempt to replicate Eyal et al.’s (2008) findings in U.S. samples, Gong and Medin (2012) conducted four experiments, all of which failed to provide supporting evidence. In fact, they found the exact opposite pattern: Abstractness resulted in less negative evaluation of moral transgressions and less positive evaluation of virtuous behaviors. Later, another series of replication studies with Serbian samples failed to reconcile the divergent results (Žeželj & Jokić, 2014): Abstractness manipulated by introducing social distance (i.e., judging other people’s behavior rather than your own) strengthened moral judgment, consistent with Eyal et al.’s findings, whereas abstractness manipulated by questioning why you would do something, as opposed to how you would do it, led to less harsh judgments of moral transgressions, consistent with Gong and Medin’s findings. Abstractness manipulated by temporal distance, however, did not have any effect on moral judgments in either of two separate studies (Žeželj & Jokić, 2014). Later research provided further evidence for this complexity: An abstractness manipulation increased deceptive behavior among U.S. participants, whereas it decreased deceptive behavior among Turkish participants (Alper, 2019). Thus, it turned out that the effect of construal level on moral judgments was not very straightforward.

How Is Construal Level Related to Political Attitudes?

The effect of construal level on political attitudes is similarly complex. As abstract construal makes higher-order, core values more salient, it emphasizes core ideological beliefs that influence political attitudes in different domains (e.g., Alper, 2018). If you are a conservative, for example, traditions are important to you. Such conventionalism, however, is a very abstract value that transcends different contexts. You might be against abortion and also argue that younger people should respect the elderly. Although there are many differences between the two issues, both attitudes are the consequences of the same core values. When people have an abstract mind-set, they pay attention to these higher-order values; however, when they have a concrete mind-set, they give more importance to contextual details (e.g., Ledgerwood, Trope, & Chaiken, 2010). For example, you might be against abortion in general (an abstract construal of the issue), but if the fetus has a physical anomaly that puts both the baby’s and the mother’s life in danger (a more concrete, detail-oriented construal of the same issue), this might change your opinion.

In an earlier study, it was found that a manipulation of abstract construal decreases the likelihood of being influenced by interaction partners; people were instead driven by their own values (Ledgerwood et al., 2010). They were more likely to rely on their own abstract ideals (i.e., how much they tended to justify the status quo) rather than further concrete details that they learned from other people. One implication of this result is that people with an abstract mind-set stick with their initial political convictions rather than finding a compromise, which is likely to increase political polarization. Consistent with this assumption, other findings (Luguri & Napier, 2013) showed that abstractness increased political polarization (regarding issues such as increased military spending, universal health care, and unemployment benefits) but only when political party affiliation was made salient. This is because liberals and conservatives have different core values, and when an abstract mind-set activates these values, their attitudes polarize into two different extremes. When national identity is made salient, however, political polarization decreases because national identity is a commonly shared value among both liberals and conservatives (Luguri & Napier, 2013). In a more recent study, Alper (2018) found that abstractness increases the consistency in responses to political-attitude scales. For example, the social-dominance-orientation scale (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001) includes many items regarding different contexts, yet they are all related to the same underlying core political attitude, social-dominance orientation (i.e., normalizing the hierarchical structures in social life). Thus, an abstract mind-set activates this core value, and as a result, people respond to different items in a very similar manner. Although Alper’s (2018) study did not directly tap into the issue of political polarization, the results imply that abstractness renders political attitudes more consistent and less variant regardless of the context, which might in turn increase the gap between people with high and low levels of social-dominance orientation, for example.

There have been a number of studies suggesting that abstractness increases political polarization. However, other studies have found exactly the opposite: For example, in one study, ideology (liberalism vs. conservatism) did not predict different attitudes toward certain out-groups, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals; atheists; and Muslims, when participants had an abstract mind-set (Luguri, Napier, & Dovidio, 2012). In other words, ideological differences in attitudes toward out-groups disappeared with abstract construal. This was because the abstract construal rendered fairness, a broad moral principle, more salient, which made liberals and conservatives more similar to each other (Luguri et al., 2012). Similarly, it was found that abstractness increases the endorsement of individualizing moral foundations (i.e., moral principles regarding avoiding harm to other people and preventing unfairness) among both liberals and conservatives (Napier & Luguri, 2013). As a result, the political polarization between liberals and conservatives was decreased. In another study, liberals and conservatives had less polarized attitudes regarding “the Ground Zero Mosque” (a Muslim community center that was planned to be built near where the World Trade Center towers used to stand) when they had an abstract mind-set (Yang, Preston, & Hernandez, 2013). Yogeeswaran and Dasgupta (2014) similarly demonstrated that an abstract construal of multiculturalism led White Americans to be relatively more supportive of multiculturalism. In short, these results suggest that liberals and conservatives both become more moderate with an abstract mind-set.

Hence, similar to the case of morality, there are two sets of findings regarding the relationship between construal level and politics, and their implications contradict each other. On the one hand, it has been argued that abstract construal makes core values more salient and, therefore, make people more extreme in their political orientation (e.g., Ledgerwood et al., 2010; Napier & Luguri, 2013). On the other hand, other findings suggest that people become more moderate, not more extreme, in their political convictions when they have an abstract mind-set (e.g., Luguri et al., 2012; Napier & Luguri, 2013; Yang et al., 2013; Yogeeswaran & Dasgupta, 2014). So the results are complicated. In fact, it was sometimes the case that the same study had contradictory findings: Chan (2016), for example, found that abstractness increases traditionalism among both liberals and conservatives but polarizes their attitudes regarding an unequal, hierarchical society. Luckily, past research has also provided several explanations for such seemingly contradictory effects.

Potential Explanations for the Contradictory Results

Different people have different core values

If an abstract mind-set makes core values more salient (Ledgerwood, 2014), then it is in fact not plausible to expect the same effect for everyone, as there are individual differences in which values are regarded as more central and important (Eyal & Liberman, 2012). For example, it is now well established that liberals and conservatives rely on different moral foundations: Individualizing foundations are more important for liberals, whereas binding foundations (respect for authority, loyalty, and sanctity) are more strongly endorsed by conservatives (Graham et al., 2009). Therefore, it would be reasonable to expect that abstractness would have different effects on moral judgment depending on whether the person in question is liberal or conservative. In general, therefore, abstractness would increase the importance of whatever value is the most significant to you. Luguri and Napier (2013), for example, found that when party affiliation was made salient, abstractness had different effects on liberals and conservatives because the core values affected by the construal-level manipulation (i.e., political values) were different for each group. However, when their commonality was emphasized by highlighting national identity, abstractness eliminated the intergroup differences. So the effect of construal level on moral and political attitudes is not uniform; instead, it depends on the core values held by the target audience. As a result, for example, it would be reasonable to expect different effects on samples with different values (e.g., Gong & Medin, 2012; Žeželj & Jokić, 2014; see Table 1).

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Table 1.

Summary of Each Potential Explanation for the Contradictory Results in the Literature on Construal-Level Theory

Potential explanation for the contradictory results	Why it is a confounding factor	Example scenario	Takeaway message
Different people have different core values.	If abstractness endorses whatever value is central to one’s political and moral attitudes, then the same abstractness manipulation might direct individuals with opposing values in different directions.	Person A values protecting individuals’ right to live more than anything. Person B values being loyal to the in-group more than anything. Persons A and B are given a case of someone who is caught spying for the enemy. The spy is about to run away if someone does not shoot him or her right now. After the abstractness manipulation, Person A becomes less likely and Person B becomes more likely to approve shooting the spy. This is because Person A becomes an even stronger advocate of individuals’ right to live and Person B’s already existing negative sentiment toward traitors becomes more extreme.	Future studies should control for interpersonal differences in core values that might be related to the political and moral attitudes being analyzed.
Deontological thinking is not the only way of thinking.	It is theorized that abstract thinking would make someone’s core values more strongly predict moral and political attitudes. However, one might be utilitarian in his or her attitudes and thus less dependent on core values. In that case, endorsing core values might not yield strong effects on that person’s moral or political judgment.	Person A is a deontological thinker and believes that incest is unacceptable, regardless of the context. Person B is a utilitarian thinker with no particular attitude toward incest. He or she judges each instance of incest on the basis of the positive and negative consequences of this behavior. Persons A and B are given a case of two siblings having sex with each other. After the abstractness manipulation, Person A becomes more likely to think that this is immoral because his or her already-existing negative attitude toward incest becomes stronger. Person B, however, has no particular context-free attitude toward incest that could be endorsed. Thus, Person B, unlike Person A, was not considerably affected by the manipulation, because his or her moral judgments were not driven by any particular value.	Individuals differ in how much they emphasize core, context-free values in determining their moral and political attitudes. Future research should account for such interpersonal variation because it is likely that an abstractness manipulation would have a weaker effect on utilitarian participants.
Not all manipulations have the same effect.	There are two main reasons why this could be a confounding factor. First, psychological-distance and construal-level manipulations have sometimes yielded contradictory effects. Second, manipulations of imaginary (as opposed to real) psychological distance have been more effective in altering the level of abstractness. In both cases, different studies using different manipulations might lead to contradictory results, because the manipulations are not equivalent to each other.	Consider the following scenario in relation to the first confounding factor. Person A is a participant in Study 1, in which abstractness is manipulated by introducing social distance. Higher abstractness strengthens core moral values and makes Person A more likely to judge a moral transgression harshly. Person B is a participant in Study 2, in which abstractness is manipulated by questioning why (as opposed to how) an action would be performed. However, contrary to the theorizing in construal-level theory, questioning why prompts thoughts about context-specific mitigating factors and thus leads to a concrete construal. Person B becomes less likely to judge a moral transgression harshly. Consider the following scenario in relation to the second confounding factor. Person A is a participant in Study 1, in which abstractness is manipulated by imagining faraway (as opposed to nearby) places. Such an imaginary distance manipulation makes Person A more likely to adopt an abstract construal. Person B is a participant in Study 2, in which abstractness is manipulated by telling participants that the people in the picture they are looking at are living in a faraway (vs. nearby) location. Although Person B becomes more likely to adopt an abstract construal, the effect is smaller than in the case of Person A in Study 1. Thus, Person A’s thinking becomes relatively more abstract than Person B’s, despite the fact that they are given theoretically equivalent manipulations.	Contradictory or null results might be partially related to differences in methodologies. Using manipulation checks to identify the direction and size of the effect produced by each manipulation is recommended.

Conclusion

CLT provides a series of findings illustrating how abstract and concrete mind-sets might influence moral and political attitudes differently. Although results clearly indicate that construal level has an effect on moral and political attitudes, there are mixed findings regarding the direction of that effect. I argue that the complexity arises from three important factors: (a) Abstractness increases the importance of different core values for different people, (b) construal level is likely to interact with utilitarian (vs. deontological) thinking style, and (c) different manipulation techniques might lead to different results. Although all three explanations are derived from past research in CLT, these factors usually go unnoticed in empirical studies. By taking these factors into account, future CLT research can provide a much more comprehensive and reliable explanation for how construal level affects moral and political attitudes.

Recommended Reading

Alper, S. (2018). (See References). An overview of past research on the relationship between construal level and political attitudes.

Eyal, T., & Liberman, N. (2012). (See References). A detailed discussion of how construal level influences moral judgment and behavior.

Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2008). The psychology of transcending the here and now. Science, 322, 1201–1205. doi:10.1126/science.1161958. A review of how psychological distance influences prediction, evaluation, and behavior.

Soderberg, C. K., Callahan, S. P., Kochersberger, A. O., Amit, E., & Ledgerwood, A. (2015)(See References). Meta-analyses of the effect of psychological distance on evaluations, predictions, and behaviors in different domains.