Seeing the Forest Beyond the Trees: A Construal-Level Approach to Self-Control

Self-control failure is a ubiquitous and troubling problem people face. This article reviews psychological models of self-control and describes a new integrative approach based on construal level theory (e.g., Trope & Liberman, 2003). This construal-level perspective proposes that people’s subjective mental construals or representations of events impacts self-control. Specifically, more abstract, global (high-level) construals promote self-control success, whereas more concrete, local (low-level) construals tend to lead to self-control failure. That is, self-control is promoted when people see the proverbial forest beyond the trees. This article surveys research findings that demonstrate that construing events at high-level versus low-level construals promotes self-control. This article also discusses how a construal-level perspective promotes understanding of self-control failures. Despite remarkable intellectual capacities, people frequently make decisions and act in a manner that is contrary to their global interests (e.g., Ainslie, 1975; Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996; Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989; Thaler, 1991; Wertenbroch, 1998). Smokers, for example, continue smoking in full knowledge of the grave health consequences. Consumers spend more money than they know they can afford, sacrificing their savings and financial health. Why is it that people knowingly choose to act in a way that undermines their valued goals and concerns? Researchers refer to this inability to make decisions and behave in accordance to one’s global interests as self-control failure. When faced with more salient incentives and rewards in their immediate local contexts, people seem unable to resist them and forfeit their more global objectives. These failures have immense costs both to the individual and to society, and are implicated in a number of the nation’s most pressing problems, such as obesity, substance abuse, aggression, unsafe sexual practices, and poor financial savings. Understanding when and why people fail at self-control is thus a burning research question. In what follows, I review the three most prominent theoretical models of self-control. I present them in their ‘pure’ forms, recognizing that they are often ‘blended’ together by specific researchers. I will then review supporting evidence for an emerging perspective, 1476 Construals and Self-Control © 2008 The Author Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2/3 (2008): 1475–1496, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00118.x Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd which highlights people’s understanding or construal of events as a major determinant of self-control success or failure. Review of Extant Models of Self-Control Temporal discounting The rewards to be reaped by one’s global goals are often not experienced in the present, but instead will be enjoyed in the distant future. For example, one might not benefit immediately from avoiding chocolate cake, but will reap the benefits of dieting in the future. Accordingly, many researchers have suggested that self-control is a problem of intertemporal choice – making decisions between choices that differ in the timing of their rewards (e.g., Ainslie, 1975; Frederick, Loewenstein, & O’Donoghue, 2002; Thaler, 1991; Wertenbroch, 1998). Researchers studying intertemporal choice have observed that people discount the value of distant future rewards. For example, $10 today is valued more than $10 a year from now. Moreover, people discount the value of rewards in a hyperbolic manner; that is, one unit of time causes a steeper depreciation of value in the near versus distant future. This temporal discounting can lead to a phenomenon whereby rewards that are smaller but more immediate are preferred over those that are larger but more delayed (and, hence, discounted). This, in turn, leads to decisions that sacrifice more global objectives in favor of local incentives. This model thus suggests that it is the temporal immediacy of the smaller local reward that causes self-control failures. Making decisions when both options are in the distant future should mitigate these failures. Indeed, research has shown that although people overwhelmingly prefer to receive $20 now versus $50 in a year from now, the addition of a constant delay to both choice options (e.g., adding a year’s delay to the receipt of both rewards) leads them to reverse their preferences (e.g., Green, Fristoe, & Myerson, 1994; Kirby & Herrnstein, 1995). Temporal discounting perspectives, however, leave largely unspecified the psychological processes that cause value to become discounted over time. That is, time demonstrably impacts the emphasis placed on local versus global concerns, but it is not clear by what cognitive and motivational mechanisms. The scope of time-discounting approaches, moreover, is limited to situations involving temporal differences in the rewards. Selfcontrol situations, however, need not always involve rewards that differ in time (see also Rachlin, 1995). For example, an official offered a bribe might experience a local–global value conflict between wealth and honesty. If one takes a bribe and benefits financially, one is simultaneously wealthier but also dishonest. If one refuses, one may not have benefited financially but is honest. Such conflicts reveal differences not in the timing of rewards, but rather the globality of their implications (for similar arguments, see James, 1890; Rachlin, 1995).