Paper published in European Journal of Social Psychology ......National Science Foundation...

Paper published in European Journal of Social Psychology

Bruyneel, S.D., & Dewitte, S. (2012). Engaging in self-regulation results in low-level construals. European Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 763-769. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.1896

Engaging in Self-Regulation Results in Low-Level Construals

Sabrina D. Bruyneel a and Siegfried Dewitte b

a Corresponding author. Sabrina D. Bruyneel, Research Center for Marketing and

Consumer Science, KU Leuven, Naamsestraat 69, 3000 Leuven, Belgium, E-mail

address: [email protected], Tel.: +32 16 32 69 47, Fax: +32 16 32 67 32

b Siegfried Dewitte, Research Center for Marketing and Consumer Science, KU

Leuven

SELF-REGULATION AND CONSTRUAL-LEVEL 2

Acknowledgements

This article is based on the first author’s dissertation under the guidance of the second.

Financial support by a KU Leuven university grant (OT/03/07 and OT/07/13), the

National Science Foundation (G.0391.03 and G.0472.09), and Censydiam-Synovate

are gratefully acknowledged. We gratefully acknowledge the detailed feedback from

all members of the dissertation committee: Marnik Dekimpe, Kathleen Vohs, Luk

Warlop (co-chair of the committee), and Klaus Wertenbroch. We also thank Uzma

Khan and all members of the consumer behavior group at the KU Leuven for helpful

comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.


Abstract

Previous research has suggested that self-regulation results in low-level construals,

but has inferred construal levels after self-regulation only indirectly, through

construal-dependent judgments and choices. In the present paper we demonstrate a

direct link between engaging in self-regulation and low-level construals, by

manipulating self-regulation and subsequently assessing construal levels using well-

established and straightforward measures of construal level in three studies.

Participants who engaged in self-regulation subsequently provided lower egocentric

spatial distance estimates (Studies 1A and 1B), formed more groups when

categorizing objects (Study 2), and used more concrete language when describing

cartoon main characters’ behavior (Study 3) than participants who did not engage in

self-regulation. These findings provide direct evidence that low-level construals result

from engaging in self-regulation.

Keywords: self-regulation, self-control, depletion, construal-level


Engaging in Self-Regulation Results in Low-Level Construals

The capacity to self-regulate is an important feature of human nature. We

define self-regulation as the self’s capacity to alter its own habitual or unwanted

responses with the goal of implementing more desirable responses. Through self-

regulation, people are able to regulate their thoughts, control their emotions, alter their

performance, and/or inhibit their impulses (cf. Vohs & Baumeister, 2004). Consider

for instance Sue, who is attending mass and tries very hard not to laugh out loud while

thinking about a funny experience she had earlier that morning. It can be said that Sue

is engaging in self-regulation at that moment. The focus of the present paper will be

on these types of self-regulatory issues.

Although self-regulation has been shown to be of significant importance for

achieving success in life (e.g., Mischel, Shoda, & Peake, 1988), self-regulatory

breakdowns are observed quite frequently (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1996). Hence, it

should come as no surprise that self-regulation has received a lot of theoretical and

empirical attention in social psychology and related fields over the last couple of

decades (see e.g., de Ridder, Lensvelt-Mulders, Finkenauer, Stok, & Baumeister,

2012, for a recent review concerning the link between trait self-regulation and

behavior). According to the self-regulatory strength model, which is a prominent

model in psychology (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000), self-regulation taxes a limited

self-regulatory resource that is akin to energy or strength and thus brings people into a

state of resource depletion. This state reduces people’s capacity to self-regulate in the

period following their previous self-regulatory effort.

The aim of the present paper is to contribute to the literature on self-regulation

and self-regulatory resource depletion by providing more insight into the


psychological processes underlying self-regulation. Specifically, we intend to

demonstrate in a series of studies that engaging in self-regulation results in the

adoption of low-level construals. First, we review the relevant literature to deduct the

hypothesis that engaging in self-regulation induces low-level construals. We move on

to demonstrating this causal link between engaging in self-regulation and low-level

construals in three studies. In the final section, we offer a summary of our findings

and we end with some concluding remarks.

Self-Regulation and Self-Regulatory Resource Depletion

All acts of self-regulation have been argued to draw on a common limited

resource that is akin to energy or strength, leading to the straightforward prediction

that self-regulation will be followed by a period of diminished capacity to engage in

subsequent self-regulation before the resource builds up again (Baumeister,

Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998; Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998). In the past

decade, dozens of studies have documented this so-called ego depletion effect. These

studies typically use a two-task paradigm requiring participants to engage in self-

regulation first and then perform a subsequent, seemingly unrelated task that also

requires self-regulation. The recurring observation is that self-regulation in the first

phase reduces self-regulatory performance in the second phase of the study (see

Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010, for a recent meta-analysis).

Researchers have demonstrated self-regulatory resource depletion in diverse

circumstances. For instance, regulating one's emotions or suppressing forbidden

thoughts induced people soon afterwards to show impaired physical stamina or to give

up quickly at unsolvable anagrams (Muraven et al., 1998). Related, inhibiting

dominant responses in a taxing Stroop task weakened performance at a puzzle tracing


task later on (Wallace & Baumeister, 2002). Amongst other findings, researchers also

showed that coping with experimentally activated stigma impaired stigmatized

participants’ subsequent attentional and physical self-regulation (Inzlicht, McKay, &

Aronson, 2006). Also perspective taking was shown to involve active self-regulation

as the effects of perspective taking on prosocial behavior (i.e., complying with

requests for help) were more pronounced when self-regulatory resources were high

(Fennis, 2011).

Several attempts have been made to gain insight in psychological processes

underlying these depletion effects. For instance, the depletion effect was found to be

statistically mediated by elongated time perception after initial self-regulation (Vohs

& Schmeichel, 2003). Also neural processes underlying self-regulatory failure have

been studied, and it was found that depletion was mediated by reduced activity in the

anterior cingulate cortex, suggesting that initial self-regulatory exertion constrains the

conflict-monitoring system in the brain (Inzlicht & Gutsell, 2007). Self-regulation has

also been argued to rely on an actual energy resource, that is, blood glucose (Gailliot

et al., 2007). Specifically, self-regulation was found to require significant amounts of

glucose and to be impaired when the supply of glucose is limited. Other moderators

found to neutralize or even reverse depletion effects in some cases include naive

theories or expectancies about the consequences of self-regulation (Martijn, Tenbult,

Merckelbach, Dreezens, & de Vries, 2002; Job, Dweck, & Walton, 2010), perceived

rather than actual depletion (Clarkson, Hirt, Jia, & Alexander, 2010), motivation to

perform (Muraven & Slessareva, 2003), implementation intentions (Webb & Sheeran,

2003), persistence primes (Alberts, Martijn, Greb, Merckelbach, & de Vries, 2007;

Martijn, Alberts, Merckelbach, Havermans, Huijts, & de Vries, 2007), positive affect

(Tice, Baumeister, Shmueli, & Muraven, 2007), self-awareness (Alberts, Martijn, &


de Vries, 2011), self-monitoring (Wan & Sternthal, 2008), engaging in multiple

(compared to one) initial self-regulatory tasks (Converse & DeShon, 2009), self-

affirmation (Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009), similarity of sequential self-regulatory

response conflicts (Dewitte, Bruyneel, & Geyskens, 2009), and mental construal

levels (Agrawal & Wan, 2009).

In the present paper, we want to add to the literature providing insights into the

psychological processes that result from engaging in self-regulation. Specifically, we

will build upon previous findings suggesting that engaging in self-regulation elicits

relatively low levels of mental construal (Wan & Agrawal, 2011). Contrary to these

previous findings demonstrating a link between engaging in self-regulation and

construal levels in an indirect way however, we intend to show in a direct manner that

there exists an after-effect of self-regulation on levels of mental construal, using well-

established and straightforward construal level measures assessed immediately after

acts of self-regulation. Potential implications for depletion will be discussed.

Self-Regulation and Low Levels of Mental Construal

Recently, it has been suggested that engaging in self-regulation induces low-

level construals (Wan & Agrawal, 2011). High-level construals capture global,

superordinate, primary features of a situation or action (e.g., thinking about why an

action should be done), whereas low-level construals capture local, subordinate,

secondary features of a situation or action (e.g., thinking about how an action should

be done; cf. Trope & Liberman, 2003; 2010).

In several experiments, Wan and Agrawal (2011) asked participants to either

or not engage in self-regulation, and subsequently provided them with a judgment or

choice task involving decision options that varied in features associated with higher


versus lower construal levels. They consistently observed an increased preference for

decision options with attractive lower level features after a self-regulatory task

compared to a neutral task. In one study for instance, self-regulation was manipulated

by asking participants to make various active product choices, which has been shown

to consume self-regulatory resources (i.e., self-regulation condition; Bruyneel,

Dewitte, Vohs, & Warlop, 2006; Vohs, Baumeister, Schmeichel, Twenge, Nelson, &

Tice, 2008) or to rate the same products on past usage without making active choices

(i.e., no self-regulation condition). Subsequently, participants rated their likelihood of

eating at a restaurant that offered either great food but not much of a view or a great

view but mediocre food. Food quality was taken to be a primary feature for restaurant

choice (i.e., food is a defining element for restaurants), whereas having a view was

taken to be a secondary feature (i.e., having a view is optional for restaurants).

Secondary features have been argued to be more consistent with lower-level

construals relative to primary features (cf. Trope & Liberman, 2003). Participants who

had engaged in self-regulation in the first phase of the study indicated a greater

likelihood to visit the restaurant when it offered an attractive secondary feature (i.e., a

great view) than participants who had not engaged in self-regulation in the first phase

of the study. In addition, participants who had engaged in self-regulation reported that

the primary feature (i.e., food) was less important, while they indicated that the

secondary feature (i.e., the view) was more important than participants who had not

engaged in self-regulation did. These importance ratings mediated the effects of prior

self-regulation on dining intentions. Hence, these findings are in line with the notion

that engaging in self-regulation induces low-level construals.

Wan and Agrawal (2011) showed that engaging in self-regulation influences

subsequent decisions and judgments, and provided evidence suggesting that this


occurs because engaging in self-regulation heightens a focus on self-regulatory

resources and feelings of fatigue. Because resource concerns are related to lower-level

construals, this resource focus leads people to adopt lower-level construals. As a

consequence, a preference for attractive lower-level construal features will be

prompted in subsequent decisions. However intriguing these findings may be, Wan

and Agrawal (2011) did not provide direct evidence for the hypothesized link between

engaging in self-regulation and construal levels. Instead, they assessed changes in

construal level as a function of engaging in self-regulation through indirect measures

such as construal-dependent judgments. To our knowledge, nowhere in the literature

on self-regulation or construal levels has such a link been demonstrated directly. We

intend to make this the contribution of the present paper. Specifically, in three studies

we manipulate self-regulation and assess construal levels directly, using well-

established and straightforward measures of construal level. In all studies we show

that engaging in self-regulation results in low-level construals.

The Present Studies

Building on the above-reviewed literature, in three studies we demonstrate that

engaging in acts of self-regulation results in the adoption of low-level construals.

Construal level theory has two particularly appealing features. First, it has been shown

that construal levels can be procedurally primed or activated by the usage of high-

level or low-level construals in unrelated prior contexts (Smith & Branscombe, 1987)

or can be induced directly through the activation of cognitive procedures associated

with high-level or low-level construals (Freitas, Gollwitzer, & Trope, 2004). This

characteristic allows us to manipulate self-regulation in the first phase of our studies,

and measure construal level subsequently, as we can assume that the level of construal


adopted in the first phase will transfer to the second phase of the study (Studies 1-3).

Second, construal level theory is known to apply to any instrumental action, object,

event, or situation (Trope & Liberman, 2000; 2003). This feature enables us to use a

broad range of dependent measures to tap construal level, ranging from descriptions

of situations (Study 1) over descriptions of objects (Study 2) to descriptions of

behaviors (Study 3).

In all studies, consistent with previous findings on procedural priming of

construal levels, we demonstrate that engaging in self-regulation results in low-level

construals using empirical measures of construal level assessed after the self-

regulatory task (e.g., Freitas, Gollwitzer, & Trope, 2004; Smith & Branscombe,

1987). We use various self-regulatory tasks and various measures of construal level as

a first step towards generalization. Both the self-regulatory tasks (Muraven &

Slessareva, 2003; Wallace & Baumeister, 2002) and the measures of construal level

(e.g., Liberman & Förster, 2009; Liberman, Sagristano, & Trope, 2002; Stephan,

Liberman, & Trope, 2010) have been well-established in previous literature.

Study 1

In Study 1, we tested the hypothesis that engaging in self-regulation results in

low-level construals using an empirical measure of construal level after an initial self-

regulatory task (cf., Freitas, Gollwitzer, & Trope, 2004; Smith & Branscombe, 1987).

Participants engaged in a task that either required self-regulation or not. Subsequently,

participants estimated the spatial distance between where they were and a well-known

geographical point in the city in which they were located. Giving lower egocentric

distance estimates (i.e., distance estimates between oneself and other stimuli) as

compared to giving higher egocentric distance estimates indicates the adoption of


lower-level construals (cf. Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006; Liberman &

Förster, 2009). This is because low-level construals, compared to high-level

construals, do not afford distancing that much, which results into bringing to mind

more proximal instantiations of objects as well (Liberman & Förster, 2009; Trope &

Liberman, 2010). If engaging in self-regulation results in low-level construals,

participants who have engaged in self-regulation should give lower egocentric

distance estimates than participants who have not engaged in self-regulation.

Method

Participants were 111 undergraduate students (70 women). They received a

participation fee. Of these participants, 43 (28 women) participated in Study 1A,

whereas 68 (42 women) participated in Study 1B.

Participants were asked to engage in a thought-listing task for five minutes.

They were instructed to write down their thoughts and to either avoid thinking about a

white bear (self-regulatory condition) or to think about anything they wanted,

including a white bear (no self-regulatory condition). When thinking of a white bear

in the self-regulatory condition, participants had to immediately change their thoughts

and try very hard not to think of a white bear again (cf. Wegner, Schneider, Carter, &

White, 1987). A similar task proved to be a successful self-regulatory manipulation in

earlier research (e.g., Muraven & Slessareva, 2003). Indeed, in such a task

participants have to regulate their thoughts by not thinking of a white bear although

this thought is made very salient by the experimental instructions.

Subsequently, participants estimated how far away they were from a well-

known store located in their university’s city (Study 1A) or how far away they were

from their university city’s town hall (Study 1B). Recently, it has been shown that


lower levels of construal reduce estimated egocentric psychological distance,

including spatial distance (Liberman & Förster, 2009). Finally, we also assessed

participants’ mood by means of the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule

(PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) to validate that mood states were not

different depending on self-regulatory condition.

Results and Discussion

Our dependent variable was the estimated egocentric spatial distance. Three

Study 1A and five Study 1B outliers obtaining a score on the dependent variable that

deviated at least three standard deviations from the mean score in their experimental

condition were removed. As predicted, Study 1A participants who had engaged in

self-regulation provided lower distance estimates (M = 940.48 m, SD = 336.01 m)

than Study 1A participants who had not engaged in self-regulation (M = 1310.89 m,

SD = 543.98 m), F(1, 38) = 6.86, p < .02, d = 0.84. Likewise, Study 1B participants

who had engaged in self-regulation provided lower distance estimates (M = 1483.29

m, SD = 606.20 m) than Study 1B participants who had not engaged in self-regulation

(M = 1990.63 m, SD = 851.00 m), F(1, 61) = 7.39, p < .01, d = 0.70.

The effect of engaging in self-regulation on egocentric distance estimates

cannot be explained by mood differences. Levels of positive affect (self-regulation

Study 1A: M = 26.71, SD = 4.57; no self-regulation Study 1A: M = 29.05, SD = 5.91;

F(1, 38) = 1.98, p = .17, d = 0.45; self-regulation Study 1B: M = 27.19, SD = 5.74; no

self-regulation Study 1B: M = 26.31, SD = 8.03; F(1, 61) = 0.25, p = .62, d = 0.13)

and negative affect (self-regulation Study 1A: M = 13.24, SD = 3.52; no self-

regulation Study 1A: M = 14.11, SD = 3.67; F(1, 38) = 0.58, p = .45, d = 0.24; self-

regulation Study 1B: M = 14.45, SD = 4.00; no self-regulation Study 1B: M = 16.09,


SD = 6.12; F(1, 61) = 1.58, p = .21, d = 0.32) did not differ between self-regulatory

conditions. Moreover, adjusting for positive and negative affect as covariates did not

change the pattern of results reported above, suggesting that mood does not mediate

the effect of engaging in self-regulation on egocentric distance estimates. These

findings provide evidence in a direct way that engaging in self-regulation results in

low-level construals, and are thus consistent with our hypothesis.

Study 2

The aim of Study 2 was to replicate the findings of Study 1 using a different

measure of construal level. Participants initially engaged in the same task that either

required self-regulation or not as in Study 1. Subsequently, they imagined themselves

in one of three situations (e.g., having a yard sale) and classified objects related to

each situation (e.g., books, cutlery) in as many categories as they deemed suitable.

Forming fewer object groups indicates relatively more high-level, abstract ways of

categorizing, whereas forming more object groups indicates relatively more low-level,

concrete ways of categorizing (Liberman, Sagristano, & Trope, 2002). If engaging in

self-regulation results in low-level construals, participants who have engaged in self-

regulation should form more object groups than participants who have not engaged in

self-regulation.

Method


participation fee.

Participants were asked to engage in the same thought-listing task as in Study

1. Subsequently, they imagined that they were going on a camping trip, that they were


going to be moving into a new apartment, or that they were going to have a yard sale.

Each scenario came with 38 objects that participants had to place into as many groups

as they deemed appropriate (e.g., tent and matches in the camping scenario, VCR and

computer in the moving out scenario, and roller blades and board games in the yard

sale scenario). This task provides a well-established measure of construal level (e.g.,

Liberman, Sagristano, & Trope, 2002). Participants’ mood was again assessed by

means of the PANAS (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) to validate that mood states

were not different depending on self-regulatory condition.


We counted the number of object groups into which participants classified the

objects of each scenario. We collapsed over scenarios. As predicted, participants who

had engaged in self-regulation formed more object groups (M = 6.82, SD = 1.70) than

participants who had not engaged in self-regulation (M = 6.00, SD = 1.41), F(1, 61) =

4.24, p = .04, d = 0.53. Thus, Study 2 demonstrated that engaging in self-regulation

leads people to categorize objects in more different groups afterwards.

The effect of engaging in self-regulation on categorization cannot be explained by

mood differences. Levels of positive (self-regulation: M = 24.29, SD = 5.46; no self-

regulation: M = 26.40, SD = 6.78; F(1, 61) = 1.80, p = .19, d = 0.35) and negative

affect (self-regulation: M = 14.61, SD = 6.24; no self-regulation: M = 13.90, SD =

5.03; F(1, 61) = 0.24, p = 0.63, d = 0.13) did not differ between self-regulatory

conditions. Moreover, adjusting for positive and negative affect as covariates did not

change the pattern of results reported above, suggesting that mood does not mediate

the effect of engaging in self-regulation on categorization. Thus, the results of Study 2


again provide evidence in a direct way that engaging in self-regulation results in low-

level construals.

Study 3

The aim of Study 3 was to replicate the findings of the previous studies again

using a different measure of construal level. For reasons of generalization, we also

used a different self-regulatory task. After participants engaged in the initial task that

either required self-regulation or not, they watched a series of five cartoons and

described what they saw in writing, using one single word for each cartoon. Words

were analyzed for abstractness of language, using coding schemes from the Linguistic

Categorization Model (Semin & Fiedler, 1998). Using more abstract language

indicates the adoption of higher-level construals, whereas using more concrete

language indicates the adoption of lower-level construals (Trope & Liberman, 2010).

If engaging in self-regulation results in low-level construals, participants who have

engaged in self-regulation should use more concrete language than participants who

have not engaged in self-regulation.

Method


participation fee.

Participants were asked to engage in a variation of the Stroop task and to

indicate the ink color of 50 color names. Words and ink colors were either matched

(e.g., RED in red ink; no self-regulation condition) or mismatched (e.g., RED in

yellow ink; self-regulation condition). In addition, in the self-regulation condition, in

case a word in blue ink appeared (i.e., in 25% of the trials), participants were


instructed to indicate the word rather than the ink color. A similar task proved to be a

successful self-regulatory manipulation in earlier research (e.g., Wallace &

Baumeister, 2002). Indeed, in such a task participants have to inhibit the dominant

response of reading the word, and focus on its color instead.

Subsequently, participants watched a series of five cartoons and described the

behavior of each cartoon’s main character using one single word. Two judges blind to

condition coded participants’ written descriptions according to the Linguistic

Categorization Model (Semin & Fiedler, 1998). According to this model, four

linguistic categories (i.e., descriptive action verbs, interpretative action verbs, state

verbs, and adjectives) can be organized along a dimension varying from concrete to

abstract, with descriptive action verbs being the least, and adjectives being the most

abstract. Typically, a weighting schema is applied to weigh descriptive action verbs,

(1) interpretative action verbs, (2) state verbs, (3) and adjectives (4) (Semin & Smith,

1999). Words describing the cartoon rather than its main character’s actions (i.e., 4 %

of the words) were omitted from the analysis. To control for these missing values, we

standardized the scores within cartoons before averaging them across cartoons,

yielding a standardized abstractness index. The inter-rater reliability was high, r = .94,

p < .0001. Discrepancies in codes were resolved through discussion to form a single

index. Abstractness of language use has been reliably linked to construal level in

previous research (e.g., Semin & Smith, 1999; Stephan, Liberman, & Trope, 2010).

Again, participants’ mood was assessed by means of the PANAS (Watson, Clark, &

Tellegen, 1988) to validate that mood states were not different depending on self-

regulatory condition.



As predicted, participants who had engaged in self-regulation used more

concrete language (M = -0.08, SD = 0.60) than participants who had not engaged in

self-regulation (M = 0.20, SD = 0.78), F(1, 104) = 4.25, p = .04, d = 0.41. This

provides again direct evidence that engaging in self-regulation results in low-level

construals. As before, the effect of engaging in self-regulation on construal level

cannot be explained by mood differences. Levels of positive (self-regulation: M =

29.30, SD = 6.15; no self-regulation: M = 28.46, SD = 4.31; F(1, 104) = 0.66, p = .42,

d = 0.16) and negative affect (self-regulation: M = 13.02, SD = 3.73; no self-

regulation: M = 12.96, SD = 3.45; F(1, 104) = 0.01, p = 0.94, d = 0.02) did not differ

between self-regulatory conditions. Moreover, adjusting for positive and negative

affect as covariates did not change the pattern of results reported above, suggesting

that mood does not mediate the effect of engaging in self-regulation on construal

level. Hence, the present results once again replicate the results of the previous

studies, using a different self-regulatory manipulation and a different measure of

construal level.

General Discussion

In three experiments, we tested and found consistent support for the

hypothesis that engaging in self-regulation results in low-level construals, using

various empirical measures of construal level assessed after initial self-regulation.

Specifically, participants who engaged in self-regulation by suppressing unwanted

thoughts subsequently provided lower egocentric spatial distance estimates (Studies

1A and 1B) and formed more object groups when asked to categorize a set of objects


in as many groups as they deemed appropriate (Study 2) than participants who did not

suppress unwanted thoughts and hence did not engage in self-regulation. In Study 3,

participants who engaged in self-regulation by inhibiting their dominant responses

during a taxing Stroop task subsequently used more concrete language when asked to

describe the behavior of a series of five cartoon’s main characters than participants

who did not inhibit their dominant responses during a Stroop task and hence did not

engage in self-regulation. To our knowledge, we are the first to assess changes in

construal levels as a function of engagement in self-regulation directly. Indeed, in

previous research such changes were inferred by studying construal-dependent

judgments or choices after engaging in self-regulation (Wan & Agrawal, 2011).

Theoretical Implications

The finding that engaging in self-regulation induces relatively low levels of

construal (whether measured directly or indirectly) leads to the intriguing prediction

that engaging in self-regulation might facilitate performance at subsequent tasks that

require relatively low-level construals, such as self-regulatory tasks for which success

depends on a focus on details (Wan & Agrawal, 2011), even though engaging in self-

regulation leads to depletion of limited self-regulatory resources. Indeed, it was

recently demonstrated that low-level construals can improve self-regulation when one

must attend closely to the physical environment to succeed at self-regulation, such as

when engaging in a standard Stop Signal Task (Schmeichel, Vohs, & Duke, 2011). On

the other hand, low-level construals that result from engaging in self-regulation might

very well be detrimental to subsequent acts of self-regulation, which is the typical

behavioural pattern observed in depletion studies. In fact, it has been shown

empirically that activation of high-level construals led to more success at regulating


the self than activation of low-level construals. In a series of studies, Fujita and

colleagues (2006) induced high-level or low-level construals by having participants

engage in tasks that required using either of these construals (e.g., asking them why or

how to engage in certain actions, respectively), and subsequently observed carry-over

effects of these construals on unrelated self-regulatory tasks (e.g., persistence at

squeezing the handles of a handgrip together). Participants who had adopted a high-

level construal during the initial experimental task were better at self-regulation (i.e.,

were able to keep the handles together for a significantly longer period of time) than

participants who had adopted a low-level construal during the initial experimental

task. Recently, Fujita and Han (2009) showed that the beneficial effect of high-level

construals on self-regulation seems to occur without deliberation, as high-level

construals evoke negative evaluations of temptations rather automatically (as

measured by the Implicit Association Test).

Agrawal and Wan (2009) replicated the finding that high-level construals are

beneficial to self-regulation in a depletion context. Specifically, after an initial act of

self-regulation (i.e., processing a threatening health message), participants showed

subsequent decreased self-regulation (i.e., less persistence at flossing teeth) compared

to those who had not engaged in self-regulation initially (i.e., those who had been

processing a less threatening health message), unless high-level construals were

experimentally induced in between both self-regulatory tasks (i.e., by asking

participants to focus on the distant rather than the near future). In these cases,

persistence did not differ between depleted and non-depleted participants. In addition,

depleted participants in the high-level construal condition persisted longer than

depleted participants in the low-level construal condition. In a similar vein,

Schmeichel and Vohs (2009) demonstrated that depletion effects were moderated by a


self-affirmation manipulation. Specifically, in one study participants either or not

engaged in an initial act of self-regulation (e.g., they wrote a story while being

required to avoid using two common letters versus writing a story without

restrictions). Subsequently, they ranked a list of values and wrote about the

importance of their top-ranked value (i.e. self-affirmation condition) or wrote about

the importance of their middle-ranked value (i.e., no-affirmation condition).

Afterwards, persistence at immersing their non-dominant hand in cold water was

assessed as a measure of self-regulation (i.e., cold pressor task). In the no-affirmation

conditions, participants who had engaged in the self-regulated writing task initially

quit sooner at the cold pressor task compared to participants who had engaged in the

free-writing task initially. In the self-affirmation conditions however, persistence did

not differ between depleted and non-depleted participants. In the same paper, it was

demonstrated that self-affirmation improves self-regulation by promoting higher

(versus lower) levels of mental construal (Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009). Taking these

findings together, one could argue that self-regulatory difficulties after initial acts of

self-regulation (i.e., ego depletion effects) can be interpreted as indirect evidence of

self-regulatory-induced changes in construal levels.

In light of the finding that self-regulation generally benefits from the adoption

of high-level construals (Agrawal & Wan, 2009; Fujita et al., 2006; Schmeichel &

Vohs, 2009), one might wonder why people seem inclined to adopt low-level

construals while engaging in (initial) acts of self-regulation. There seem to be at least

two possible processes from engaging in self-regulation to low construal level.

Previous research has argued that engaging in self-regulation leads people to focus on

the limited resources they are using and resulting feelings of fatigue, which stimulates

them to adopt relatively low-level construals (Agrawal & Wan, 2009; Wan &


Agrawal, 2011). This would suggest that the effect of engaging in self-regulation on

construal levels is mediated by the depletion that accrues from engaging in self-

regulation. Other researchers however have argued that people engaging in self-

regulation might shift to low-level features of the self-regulatory activity at hand to

prevent higher-level cognitions about the meaning of an action from interfering with

the ability to regulate effectively (cf. Leary, Adams, & Tate, 2006). This would

suggest that the effect of engaging in self-regulation on construal levels results from

the process of self-regulation directly. Specifically, ‘hypo-egoic self-regulation’ has

been defined as a state of self-regulation in which people give up deliberate action

control and respond more automatically instead. This is possible by increasing the

concreteness of one’s thoughts and adopting a ‘concrete action mindset’ while

engaging in a given behavior (Leary, Adams, & Tate, 2006). Also in Carver and

Scheier’s control theory of self-regulation (Carver & Scheier, 1982) it is assumed that

attainment of ultimate goals requires the specification of concrete behaviors one

needs to perform to reach those ultimate goals. Thus, a hierarchy of levels of control

is posited. More specifically, the theory suggests that although people have a tendency

to attend to and self-regulate at the highest level of control accessible, higher-level

self-regulation will often be suspended. Whenever problems occur, attention will be

fixed at lower levels as effective handling of problems requires them to be broken

down into smaller components, each of which by itself is manageable. We call upon

future research shedding more light on these potential processes underlying after-

effects of self-regulation on construal-levels. Whereas it seems like a focus on fatigue

and resources should facilitate a generalized (i.e., task-independent) lowering of

mental construal levels, ‘concrete action mindsets’ should facilitate task-specific

lowering of mental construal levels. An interesting avenue for future research might


therefore be to investigate the extent to which the low-level construals that result from

engaging in self-regulation are task-specific.

Conclusion

The study of self-regulation has received a lot of theoretical and empirical

attention in social psychology and related domains over the last couple of decades.

This seems warranted given the importance of successful self-regulation in people’s

lives yet rather frequently observed breakdowns of it. In the present paper, we

attempted to contribute to the literature on self-regulation by demonstrating that

engaging in self-regulation induces low-level construals. We measured construal

levels directly, assessing well-established construal-level measures immediately after

initial self-regulation. We leave it up to future research to investigate whether low-

level construals that result from engaging in self-regulation are task-specific or

generalized (i.e., task-independent) in nature (i.e., whether they result from the very

act of self-regulation directly or are mediated by depletion, specifically).


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