Recent research suggests that experimentally inducing an abstract (vs. a concrete) mind-set enhances political sophistication by increasing the consistency in political attitudes; it also enhances individualizing moral foundations and decreases binding moral foundations. However, the evidence is mixed regarding whether abstract mind-set increases or decreases the strength of moral convictions in general. In this context, the aim of this study was 2-fold. In two preregistered studies on U.S. American and Turkish samples (aggregate N = 694), we tested (1) whether abstract mind-set increases the consistency in moral convictions, similar to the case of political attitudes, and (2) whether inducing an abstract mind-set increases individualizing and decreases binding foundations. The results did not provide support for any of the hypotheses and the past findings were not reproduced. Potential implications of these findings for construal level theory literature are discussed.
AlperS. (2018). An abstract mind is a principled one: Abstract mindset increases consistency in responses to political attitude scales. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 77, 89–101. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2018.04.008
2.
AltemeyerB. (1998). The other “authoritarian personality”. In ZannaM. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (pp. 47–92). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
3.
BollenK. A. (2002). Latent variables in psychology and the social sciences. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 605–634. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135239
4.
BurgoonE. M.HendersonM. D.MarkmanA. B. (2013). There are many ways to see the forest for the trees: A tour guide for abstraction. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 501–520. doi:10.1177/1745691613497964
5.
ChanE. Y. (2016). Re-construing politics: The dual impacts of abstraction on political ideology. European Journal of Social Psychology, 46, 649–656. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2188
6.
CohenJ. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
7.
ConverseP. E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In ApterD. E. (Ed.), Ideology and discontent (pp. 206–261). London, England: Free Press of Glencoe.
8.
ConverseP. E. (1970). Attitudes and non-attitudes: Continuation of a dialogue. In TufteE. R. (Ed.), The quantitative analysis of social problems (pp. 168–189). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
9.
ConwayP.PeetzJ. (2012). When does feeling moral actually make you a better person? Conceptual abstraction moderates whether past moral deeds motivate consistency or compensatory behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 907–919. doi:10.1177/0146167212442394
10.
CronbachL. J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16, 297–334. doi:10.1007/BF02310555
11.
DaviesC. L.SibleyC. G.LiuJ. H. (2014). Confirmatory factor analysis of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. Social Psychology, 45, 431–436. doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000201
12.
EyalT.LibermanN.TropeY. (2008). Judging near and distant virtue and vice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1204–1209. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.03.012
13.
EyalT.SagristanoM. D.TropeY.LibermanN.ChaikenS. (2009). When values matter: Expressing values in behavioral intentions for the near vs. distant future. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 35–43. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.07.023
14.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.BuchnerA.LangA. G. (2009). Statistical power analyses using G* Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1149–1160. doi:10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149
15.
FeldtL. S.KimS. (2006). Testing the difference between two alpha coefficients with small samples of subjects and raters. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 66, 589–600. doi:10.1177/0013164405282488
16.
FujitaK.EyalT.ChaikenS.TropeY.LibermanN. (2008). Influencing attitudes toward near and distant objects. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 562–572. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2007.10.005
17.
FujitaK.RobertsJ. C. (2010). Promoting prospective self-control through abstraction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 1049–1054. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.013
18.
FujitaK.TropeY.LibermanN.Levin-SagiM. (2006). Construal levels and self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 351–367. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.3.351
19.
GongH.MedinD. L. (2012). Construal levels and moral judgment: Some complications. Judgment and Decision Making, 7, 628–638.
20.
GrahamJ.NosekB. A.HaidtJ.IyerR.KolevaS.DittoP. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 366–385. doi:10.1037/a0021847
21.
HaidtJ.KesebirS. (2010). Morality. In FiskeS. T.GilbertD. T.LindzeyG. (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed., pp. 797–832). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
22.
IoannidisJ. P. (2012). Why science is not necessarily self-correcting. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 645–654. doi:10.1177/1745691612464056
23.
JostJ. T. (2012). Left and right, right and wrong. Science, 337, 525–526. doi:10.1126/science.1222565
24.
JostJ. T.GlaserJ.KruglanskiA. W.SullowayF. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339–375. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339
25.
KnowlesE. S.CondonC. A. (1999). Why people say “yes”: A dual-process theory of acquiescence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 379–386. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.2.379
26.
LedgerwoodA. (2014). Evaluations in their social context: Distance regulates consistency and context dependency. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8, 436–447. doi:10.1111/spc3.12123
27.
LedgerwoodA.TropeY.ChaikenS. (2010). Flexibility now, consistency later: Psychological distance and construal shape evaluative responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 32–51. doi:10.1037/a0019843
28.
LibermanN.TropeY. (2008). The psychology of transcending the here and now. Science, 322, 1201–1205. doi:10.1126/science.1161958
LibermanN.TropeY.StephanE. (2007). Psychological distance. In HigginsE. T.KruglanskiA. W. (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (Vol. 2, pp. 353–383). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
31.
LuguriJ. B.NapierJ. (2013). Of two minds: The interactive effect of construal level and identity on political polarization. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 972–977. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2013.06.002
32.
LuguriJ. B.NapierJ. L.DovidioJ. F. (2012). Reconstruing intolerance: Abstract thinking reduces conservatives’ prejudice against nonnormative groups. Psychological Science, 23, 756–763. doi:10.1177/0956797611433877
33.
LuskinR. C. (1990). Explaining political sophistication. Political Behavior, 12, 331–361. doi:10.1007/BF00992793
34.
MaxwellS. E.LauM. Y.HowardG. S. (2015). Is psychology suffering from a replication crisis? What does “failure to replicate” really mean?American Psychologist, 70, 487–498. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0039400
35.
NapierJ. L.LuguriJ. (2013). Moral mind-sets: Abstract thinking increases a preference for “individualizing” over “binding” moral foundations. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 754–759. doi:10.1177/1948550612473783
36.
RogersR.VessM.RoutlegeC. (2016). Construal level shapes associations between political conservatism and reactions to male same-sex intimacy. Social Psychology, 47, 87–97. doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000261
37.
SoderbergC. K.CallahanS. P.KochersbergerA. O.AmitE.LedgerwoodA. (2015). The effects of psychological distance on abstraction: Two meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 141, 525–548. doi:10.1037/bul0000005
38.
TorelliC. J.KaikatiA. M. (2009). Values as predictors of judgments and behaviors: The role of abstract and concrete mindset. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 231–247. doi:10.1037/a0013836
39.
TropeY.LibermanN. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117, 440–463. doi:10.1037/a0018963
40.
VallacherR. R.WegnerD. M. (1989). Levels of personal agency: Individual variation in action identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 660–671. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.57.4.660
41.
Van BerkelL.CrandallC. S.EidelmanS.BlancharJ. C. (2015). Hierarchy, dominance, and deliberation: Egalitarian values require mental effort. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 1207–1222. doi:10.1177/0146167215591961
42.
WrightJ. C.BarilG. (2011). The role of cognitive resources in determining our moral intuitions: Are we all liberals at heart?Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1007–1012. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.03.014
43.
YangD. Y. J.PrestonJ. L.HernandezI. (2013). Polarized attitudes toward the Ground Zero mosque are reduced by high-level construal. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 244–250. doi:10.1177/1948550612446973
44.
YilmazO.HarmaM.BahçekapiliH. G.CesurS. (2016). Validation of the moral foundations questionnaire in Turkey and its relation to cultural schemas of individualism and collectivism. Personality and Individual Differences, 99, 149–154. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.04.090
45.
YilmazO.SaribayS. A. (2017a). Activating analytic thinking enhances the value given to individualizing moral foundations. Cognition, 165, 88–96. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.009
46.
YilmazO.SaribayS. A. (2017b). Analytic thought training promotes liberalism on contextualized (but not stable) political opinions. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 789–795. doi:10.1177/1948550616687092
47.
ZallerJ. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
48.
ŽeželjI. L.JokićB. R. (2014). Replication of experiments evaluating impact of psychological distance on moral judgment. Social Psychology, 45, 223–231. doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a0001
