Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
7247942 | Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes | 2018 | 10 Pages |
Abstract
To minimize waste and inefficiencies, research has sought to understand under what circumstances decision-makers tasked with allocating outcomes to self and others maximize joint outcomes - making decisions that provide the greatest net gain across all vested stakeholders, irrespective of beneficiary. We explore construal level as a critical cognitive mechanism. We hypothesize that high-level construal - a representational process that expands mental scope by broadening attention to global, gestalt wholes - relative to low-level construal - a representational process that contracts mental scope by narrowing attention to local, idiosyncratic elements - should facilitate sensitivity to the welfare of the collective unit relative to specific individuals. Four experiments demonstrate that high-level relative to low-level construal promotes decisions that maximize joint outcomes, irrespective of beneficiary. These findings contribute to a growing literature examining factors that influence consideration of joint outcomes by highlighting construal level as a key cognitive antecedent, with theoretical and practical implications.
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Authors
Paul E. Stillman, Kentaro Fujita, Oliver Sheldon, Yaacov Trope,