Yaacov Trope’s research while affiliated with New York University and other places

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Publications (204)


Understanding Self-Control as a Problem of Regulatory Scope
  • Article
  • Publisher preview available

September 2024

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121 Reads

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2 Citations

Psychological Review

Kentaro Fujita

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Yaacov Trope

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Although the focus of research for decades, there is a surprising lack of consensus on what is (and what is not) self-control. We review some of the most prominent theoretical models of self-control, including those that highlight conflicts between smaller-sooner versus larger-later rewards, “hot” emotions versus “cool” cognitions, and efficient automatic versus resource-intensive controlled processes. After discussing some of their shortcomings, we propose an alternative approach based on tenets of construal level theory (Trope et al., 2021) that integrates these disparate models while also providing novel insights. Specifically, we model self-control as a problem of regulatory scope—the range of considerations one accounts for in any decision or behavior. Self-control conflicts occur when the pursuit of specific local opportunities threatens the ability to address motivational priorities that span a broader array of time, places, individuals, and possibilities. Whereas a more contractive consideration of relevant concerns may prompt indulgence in temptation, a more expansive consideration of concerns should not only help people identify the self-control conflict but also successfully resolve it. We review empirical evidence that supports this new framework and discuss implications and new directions. This regulatory framework not only clarifies what is and what is not self-control but also provides new insights that can be leveraged to enhance self-control in all its various forms.

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Psychological closeness and concrete construal may underlie high-fidelity social emulation

November 2022

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11 Reads

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1 Citation

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

We compare bifocal stance theory's (BST) approach to social learning to construal level theory's (CLT) – a social-cognitive theory positing that psychological closeness to a model influences action-representation and thus modulates how concretely or abstractly observers emulate models. Whereas BST argues that social motives produce higher fidelity emulation, CLT argues that psychological closeness impacts cognitive construal and produces more concrete emulation across diverse motivations for emulation.


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Abstract Thinking Facilitates Aggregation of Information

December 2021

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556 Reads

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13 Citations

Journal of Experimental Psychology General

Many situations in life (such as considering which stock to invest in, or which people to befriend) require averaging across series of values. Here, we examined predictions derived from construal level theory, and tested whether abstract compared with concrete thinking facilitates the process of aggregating values into a unified summary representation. In four experiments, participants were induced to think more abstractly (vs. concretely) and performed different variations of an averaging task with numerical values (Experiments 1-2 and 4), and emotional faces (Experiment 3). We found that the induction of abstract, compared with concrete thinking, improved aggregation accuracy (Experiments 1-3), but did not improve memory for specific items (Experiment 4). In particular, in concrete thinking, averaging was characterized by increased regression toward the mean and lower signal-to-noise ratio, compared with abstract thinking. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).


Fig. 1 | Measured versus predicted changes in weekly gym visits induced by interventions. The measured change (blue) versus change predicted by third-party observers (gold) in weekly gym visits induced by each of the 53 experimental conditions in our megastudy compared with the placebo control condition during a four-week intervention period. The error bars represent the 95% confidence intervals (see Extended Data Table 6 for the complete OLS regression results shown here in blue and the sample sizes for each condition; Supplementary Information 11 for more details about the prediction data shown in gold; and Supplementary Table 1 for full descriptions of each
Measured vs. predicted change in likelihood of gym visit in a given week
The measured change (blue) vs. change predicted by third-party observers (gold) in whether participants visited the gym that was induced by each of our megastudy’s 53 experimental conditions compared to a Placebo Control condition during a four-week intervention period is depicted here. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. See Extended Data Table 7 for complete OLS regression results graphed here in blue, Supplementary Information 11 for more details about the prediction data graphed here in gold, and Supplementary Table 1 for full descriptions of each treatment condition in our megastudy. Sample weights were included in the pooled third-party prediction data to ensure equal weighting of each of our three participant samples (professors, practitioners and prolific respondents). The superscripts a–e denote the different incentive amounts offered in different versions of the bonus for returning after missed workouts, higher incentives and rigidity rewarded conditions, which are described in Supplementary Table 1. In conditions with the same name, superscripts that come earlier in the alphabet indicate larger incentives.
Measured versus predicted changes in weekly gym visits induced by interventions
The measured change (blue) versus change predicted by third-party observers (gold) in weekly gym visits induced by each of the 53 experimental conditions in our megastudy compared with the placebo control condition during a four-week intervention period. The error bars represent the 95% confidence intervals (see Extended Data Table 6 for the complete OLS regression results shown here in blue and the sample sizes for each condition; Supplementary Information 11 for more details about the prediction data shown in gold; and Supplementary Table 1 for full descriptions of each treatment condition in our megastudy). Sample weights were included in the pooled third-party prediction data to ensure equal weighting of each of our three participant samples (professors, practitioners and Prolific respondents). The superscripts a–e denote the different incentive amounts offered in different versions of the bonus for returning after missed workouts, higher incentives and rigidity rewarded conditions, which are described in Supplementary Table 1. In conditions with the same name, superscripts that come earlier in the alphabet indicate larger incentives.
Regression-estimated effects of top-performing interventions
Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science

December 2021

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2,054 Reads

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173 Citations

Nature

Policy-makers are increasingly turning to behavioural science for insights about how to improve citizens’ decisions and outcomes¹. Typically, different scientists test different intervention ideas in different samples using different outcomes over different time intervals². The lack of comparability of such individual investigations limits their potential to inform policy. Here, to address this limitation and accelerate the pace of discovery, we introduce the megastudy—a massive field experiment in which the effects of many different interventions are compared in the same population on the same objectively measured outcome for the same duration. In a megastudy targeting physical exercise among 61,293 members of an American fitness chain, 30 scientists from 15 different US universities worked in small independent teams to design a total of 54 different four-week digital programmes (or interventions) encouraging exercise. We show that 45% of these interventions significantly increased weekly gym visits by 9% to 27%; the top-performing intervention offered microrewards for returning to the gym after a missed workout. Only 8% of interventions induced behaviour change that was significant and measurable after the four-week intervention. Conditioning on the 45% of interventions that increased exercise during the intervention, we detected carry-over effects that were proportionally similar to those measured in previous research3–6. Forecasts by impartial judges failed to predict which interventions would be most effective, underscoring the value of testing many ideas at once and, therefore, the potential for megastudies to improve the evidentiary value of behavioural science.


Keeping One’s Distance: Mask Wearing is Implicitly Associated With Psychological Distance

September 2021

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48 Reads

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6 Citations

Social Psychological and Personality Science

Mask wearing plays a vital role in the fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Despite its ubiquity in everyday social life, it is still unknown how masked faces are mentally represented. Drawing on construal-level theory, we test the hypothesis that masked faces and unmasked faces are implicitly associated with psychological distance and proximity in memory, respectively. Four preregistered, high-powered experiments ( N = 354 adults) using the Implicit Association Test lend convergent support to this hypothesis across all four dimensions of psychological distance: social distance, spatial distance, temporal distance, and hypothetical distance. A mini meta-analysis validates the reliability of the findings (Hedge’s g = 0.46). The present work contributes to the growing literature on construal-level effects on implicit social cognition and enriches the current discussion on mask wearing in the pandemic and beyond.


Keeping one's distance: Mask wearing is implicitly associated with psychological distance

August 2021

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62 Reads

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3 Citations

Social Psychological and Personality Science

Mask wearing plays a vital role in the fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Despite its ubiquity in everyday social life, it is still unknown how masked faces are mentally represented. Drawing on construal level theory, we test the hypothesis that masked faces and unmasked faces are implicitly associated with psychological distance and proximity in memory, respectively. Four preregistered, high-powered experiments (N = 354 adults) using the Implicit Association Test lend convergent support to this hypothesis across all four dimensions of psychological distance: Social distance, spatial distance, temporal distance, and hypothetical distance. A mini meta-analysis validates the reliability of the findings (Hedge’s g = 0.46). The present work contributes to the growing literature on construal-level effects on implicit social cognition and enriches the current discussion on mask wearing in the pandemic and beyond.


Aging Impairs Inhibitory Control Over Incidental Cues: A Construal-Level Perspective

August 2021

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52 Reads

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9 Citations

Psychological Science

Age-related changes in decision making have been attributed to deterioration of cognitive skills, such as learning and memory. On the basis of past research showing age-related decreases in the ability to inhibit irrelevant information, we hypothesize that these changes occur, in part, because of older adults’ tendency to give more weight to low-level, subordinate, and goal-irrelevant information than younger adults do. Consistent with this hypothesis, our findings demonstrated that young adults are willing to pay more for a product with superior end attributes than a product with superior means attributes (Study 1, N = 200) and are more satisfied after an experience with superior end than means attributes (Study 2, N = 399). Young adults are also more satisfied with a goal-relevant than with a goal-irrelevant product (Study 3, N = 201; Study 4, N = 200, preregistered). Importantly, these effects were attenuated with age. Implications for research on construal level and aging, as well as implications for policymakers, are discussed.


Keeping one’s distance: Mask wearing is implicitly associated with psychological distance

April 2021

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41 Reads

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3 Citations

Mask wearing plays a vital role in the fight against the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Despite its ubiquity in everyday social life, it is still unknown how masked faces are mentally represented. Drawing on construal level theory, we test the hypothesis that masked faces and unmasked faces are implicitly associated with psychological distance and proximity in memory, respectively. Four fully preregistered, high-powered experiments (N = 354 adults) using the Implicit Association Test lend convergent support to this hypothesis across all four dimensions of psychological distance: Social distance, spatial distance, temporal distance, and hypothetical distance. A mini meta-analysis validates the reliability of the findings (Hedge’s g = 0.46). The present work provides novel and valuable evidence on the psychological effects of mask wearing, which will be crucial for ongoing political debates and public-health efforts regarding this public health measure.


Citations (88)


... On the other hand, they may perceive winning a lottery worth $1 or meeting a neighbor as psychologically close events (i.e., low hypotheticality). The ability to sense the degree of hypotheticality in events or objects helps guide people's shared understanding of what is real versus unreal, factual versus fictional, and true versus false (Grinfeld et al. 2024). ...

Reference:

The Effects of Avatar Human‐Likeness on Psychological Closeness in Virtual‐Reality
Construing hypotheticals: How hypotheticality affects level of abstraction
  • Citing Article
  • January 2024

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

... This is due to conversational search providing integrated and summarized information tailored to specific questions [40]. It aligns better with the high-level abstract thinking used by users in these situations [33,75]. Conversely, web search provides a list of results, requiring users to filter and summarize information themselves. ...

Abstract Thinking Facilitates Aggregation of Information

Journal of Experimental Psychology General

... Several interventions are deemed insignificant, in light of the incentives provided not being meaningful to exercisers [3][4][5] . For example, a recent study testing 53 different interventions found that the most effective intervention increased the weekly fitness visits by just 0.403 visits on average 6 . Predictions made from recruited participants, professors of public health and practitioners in applied behavioural science gave a 9.1 times more optimistic results than what was actually observed. ...

Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science

Nature

... While a perceived contagion threat may provoke general social distancing and avoidance tendencies, this may only apply to unmasked faces, if the facial mask is categorized as an indicator of reduced risk or relative safety. Indeed, many studies conducted during the pandemic found that people evaluated masked faces as more positive and trustworthy than unmasked faces, which was also accompanied by a reduced social distancing preference towards masked faces (e.g., Cartaud et al., 2020;Kühne et al., 2022;Lee & Chen, 2021;Marini et al., 2021;Oldmeadow & Koch, 2021;Olivera-La Rosa et al., 2020; but see Fatfouta & Trope, 2022;Seres et al., 2021). In contrast, only two studies reported explicit negative evaluations of masked faces, which included reduced trustworthiness and happiness assignments (Biermann et al., 2021), as well as the judgement that masked persons were more likely ill than unmasked persons (Olivera-La Rosa et al., 2020). ...

Keeping One’s Distance: Mask Wearing is Implicitly Associated With Psychological Distance
  • Citing Article
  • September 2021

Social Psychological and Personality Science

... For example, some work has found evidence of positive views of mask-wearers, in that they were perceived as more competent [6], physically attractive [7] and trustworthy [8] than comparable unmasked targets. Other work finds evidence of more negative perceptions of mask-wearers, in that they were seen as more psychologically distant [9] and less trustworthy [10]. Masking behaviors may not only impact the valence of evaluations, but could also be perceived as signaling additional characteristics such as an individual's risk aversion, political orientation, and toughness [11]. ...

Keeping one's distance: Mask wearing is implicitly associated with psychological distance
  • Citing Article
  • August 2021

Social Psychological and Personality Science

... 36,44,45 Digital literacy interventions were also found to be effective, 46,47 specifically when interventions are designed to meet older adults' goals and sensory abilities. 48,49 In summary, this study emphasises the adverse outcome of loneliness on older adults' perception of their ageing process. These effects are accentuated during stressful life events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, even after the implantation of vaccination programmes. ...

Aging Impairs Inhibitory Control Over Incidental Cues: A Construal-Level Perspective
  • Citing Article
  • August 2021

Psychological Science

... With the possibility that face masks could remain highly present in social contexts in post-COVID-19 years, the health, social and psychological consequences of face masks have been topics of interest in public debates and in research (e.g. [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. Because these masks cover the mouth and nose area, they hide a large portion of the face and may reduce the actual and perceived identifiability, which then may decrease the extent to which individuals feel concerned by social evaluation. ...

Keeping one’s distance: Mask wearing is implicitly associated with psychological distance
  • Citing Preprint
  • April 2021

... The former, high-level action identification, is associated with why we perform an action, while the latter, low-level action identification, is associated with how we perform it. Ample evidence suggests that people choose higher level construals for more distal (as compared to near) behaviors (Day & Bartels, 2004;Fujita, Henderson, et al., 2006;Grinfeld et al., 2021;Libby et al., 2009;Liberman & Trope, 1998;Liviatan et al., 2008;Sánchez et al., 2021;C. J. Wakslak et al., 2006). ...

Hypotheticality and Level of Construal
  • Citing Preprint
  • April 2021

... Whereas abstraction allows one to expand their mental horizons and consider a relatively broad set of targets (i.e., "see the forest"), concreteness facilitates a focus on what is, as it were, right in front of oneself (i.e. "the trees"; Marguc et al., 2011;Trope et al., 2021). Conceptually, social inclusiveness and abstractness of an entity go hand in hand: Society is a more abstract entity than your family, an organization as an entity is more abstract than its individual employees and so on. ...

Regulatory Scope and Its Mental and Social Supports
  • Citing Article
  • September 2020

Perspectives on Psychological Science

... Engaging in cognitive abstraction can be likened to climbing to a high spot (e.g., a tower) to get a better view (Kalkstein et al., 2017). Whereas abstraction allows one to expand their mental horizons and consider a relatively broad set of targets (i.e., "see the forest"), concreteness facilitates a focus on what is, as it were, right in front of oneself (i.e. ...

Broadening mental horizons to resist temptation: Construal level and self-control