Effects of Thinking Abstractly or Concretely on Self-control

1. Data Collection

1. Conduct a power analysis and recruit a sufficient number of participants and obtain informed consent from the participants.
2. Randomly assign half of the participants to the high-level condition and the other half to the low-level condition.
3. As a cover story, tell the participants that they will be completing materials for two independent studies during the 30-min session.
4. Have participants first complete a survey, ostensibly described as a survey of their opinions and activities.
5. Present participants with one of two questions, depending on their condition.
   1. For condition 1, high-level prime, ask "Why do I maintain good physical health?"
      1. Provide participants with a diagram of vertically aligned boxes that begin at the bottom of the page and are connected by upward arrows labeled Why?² The box at the very bottom of the diagram should be filled in with the statement "Maintain good physical health."
      2. Instruct participants to insert a response in the box immediately above the bottom box, answering the question of why they would maintain good physical health.
      3. After inserting their first answer, they should insert a second answer in the box immediately above the box they had just completed, answering the question why they would engage in their initial response. For example, a participant might have answered the question, "Why do I maintain good physical health?" by writing, "To do well in school"
      4. The diagram would then prompt them to ask themselves, "Why do I want to do well in school?", to which they would provide a response in the box immediately above the one they had just filled in.
      5. Participants should provide four responses in this manner.
   2. For condition 2, low-level prime, ask "How do I maintain good physical health?"
      1. Provide participants with a diagram of vertically aligned boxes that begin at the top of the page and are connected by downward arrows labeled How?2 The box at the very top of the diagram should be filled in with the statement "Maintain good physical health."
      2. Instruct participants to insert a response in the box immediately below the top box, answering the question of how they would maintain good physical health.
      3. After inserting their first answer, they should insert a second answer in the box immediately below the box they had just completed, answering the question how they would engage in their initial response. For example, a participant might have answered the question, "How do I maintain good physical health?" by writing, "Go exercise."
      4. The diagram would then prompt them to ask themselves, "How does one go exercise?", to which they would provide a response in the box immediately below the one they had just filled in.
      5. Participants should provide four responses in this manner.
6. After participants complete the construal level manipulation, present them with what is ostensibly the second of two independent studies (but in reality is the dependent measure of self-control).
   1. Have participants read four scenarios that describe an item that they might buy:
      A discount gift certificate to a restaurant
      A DVD player (or Blue-Ray)
      A set of four movie passes
      A discount coupon to the university bookstore
   2. Ask participants to indicate the dollar amount that they would pay to receive the item immediately and delayed in time.
      1. Half of the scenarios (DVD and movies passes) require participants first to indicate a monetary value for receiving the item immediately and then delayed in time, whereas the other half (restaurant and bookstore) require them first to write down the dollar amount for receiving the item delayed in time and then immediately.
      2. The time delay for each of the scenarios will vary (favorite restaurant, 6 months; DVD player, 1 year; movie passes, 1 month; bookstore coupon, 1 year).
   3. Counterbalance the presentation order of the scenarios.
7. Afterwards, have participants complete a funneled debriefing form to probe for suspicion regarding the experimental manipulations.³
8. Once all participants have completed the follow-up questionnaires, carefully debrief them and dismiss them.

2. Data Analysis

1. Conduct a manipulation check. Have two judges, unaware of condition, measure each participant's level of construal based on the abstractness of their responses to the why versus how manipulation.
   1. If a response fits the criterion Y by X, where X was the participant's response to prompt Y (i.e., participants' responses were a subordinate means to the original statement "Maintain good physical health."), have the judges code the response with a score of -1.
   2. If a response fit the criterion X by Y (i.e., participants' responses were a superordinate end served by maintaining good physical health), have the judges code the response with a score of +1.
   3. If a participant's response fit neither criterion, code the response as 0.
2. Sum the ratings of each participant's four responses to create an index of level of construal with a potential range of -4 to +4; higher scores indicate higher levels of construal.
3. Assuming a high correlation between the two judges' ratings (e.g., r = 0.91), average the ratings together.
4. Perform a two-sample t-test to ascertain if participants exposed to why (high-level) questions demonstrated a significantly higher mean than participants exposed to how (low-level) questions.
5. In addition, to examine the dependent measure of self-control, compute difference scores by subtracting the dollar value that participants were willing to pay for the distant-future versions of each of the four scenarios from the amount they were willing to pay for the immediate versions.
   1. Larger differences scores indicate stronger preferences for immediate over delayed rewards and hence a lack of self-control.
6. Difference scores can be analyzed with a 2 (construal level: high vs. low) x 4 (scenario: restaurant, DVD player, movie, bookstore) MANOVA, if assumptions of this statistical test are met (e.g., normality, absence of multivariate outliers, linearity, absence of multicollinearity, and equality of covariance matrices).