Construing Collective Concerns Increasing Cooperation by Broadening Construals in Social Dilemmas

Citation: Lawrence J. Sanna, Edward C. Chang, Craig D. Parks, Lindsay A. Kennedy Construing Collective Concerns Increasing Cooperation by Broadening Construals in Social Dilemmas. Psychological Science (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Construing Collective Concerns Increasing Cooperation by Broadening Construals in Social Dilemmas
Tagged: psychology (RSS), social psychology (RSS), cooperation (RSS)

Summary

In this paper the authors show they can get people to act more pro-socially using construal level theory (CLT). To begin they prime people with either high level contstruals that are global, abstract, or superordinate, or low level construals which are specific concrete or subordinate. Moral issues are thought to be more high level/abstract so they predicted participants who were primed with high level construals would act more pro-socially than those who were primed low level construals.

When they primed people with high level contstruals they asked more "why" question, and when they primed people with low level construals they asked people more "how" questions. For example some participants were asked "WHY do I maintain good physical health?" (high level construal) vs. "HOW do I maintain good physical health?" (low level construal). After the priming participants had to play a public goods game where they were fishing from a lake to make a profit but had to be careful not to overfish and thus destroy the resource. Participants who were primed with high level construals contributed nearly twice as many fish back to the lake than those who were primed with low level construals.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

As a society we are constantly trying to get people to act more pro-socially. This is one really neat way of trying to do that!