Transcending the "Here": The Effect of Spatial Distance on Social Judgment.

Construal level theory proposes that increasing the reported spatial distance of events produces judgments that reflect abstract, schematic representations of the events. Across 4 experiments, the authors examined the impact of spatial distance on construal-dependent social judgments. Participants structured behavior into fewer, broader units (Study 1) and increasingly attributed behavior to enduring dispositions rather than situational constraints (Study 2) when the behavior was spatially distant rather than near. Participants reported that typical events were more likely and atypical events less likely when events were more spatially distant (Study 3). They were also less likely to extrapolate from specific cases that deviated from general trends when making predictions about more spatially distant events (Study 4). Implications for social judgment are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Numbers or apologies? Customer reactions to telephone waiting time fillers.

The authors examined the effect of time perception and sense of progress in telephone queues on caller reactions to 3 telephone waiting time fillers: music, apologies, and information about location in the queue. In Study 1, conducted on 123 real calls, call abandonment was lowest, and call evaluations were most positive with information about location in the queue as the time filler. In Study 2, conducted with 83 participants who experienced a simulated telephone wait experience, sense of progress in the queue rather than perceived waiting time mediated the relationship between telephone waiting time filler and caller reactions. The findings provide insight for the management and design of telephone queues, as well as theoretical insight into critical cognitive processes that underlie telephone waiting, opening up an important new research agenda. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on confidence interval estimation following curtailed binomial tests

Techniques of Armitage (1958) for finding confidence intervals after sequential tests (SCI) are applied to curtailed binomial test boundaries. The form of the exact randomized SCI is given. We also show that the conservative confidence interval calculated as though a fixed sample size procedure had been used (FCI) remains conservative when used after stopping on a curtailed boundary. Numerical results are obtained to assess the potential gains that may be obtained by using the conservative SCI or exact SCI over the conservative FCI for these boundaries.     

Multipartite Secret Sharing by Bivariate Interpolation

Given a set of participants that is partitioned into distinct compartments, a multipartite access structure is an access structure that does not distinguish between participants belonging to the same compartment. We examine here three types of such access structures: two that were studied before, compartmented access structures and hierarchical threshold access structures, and a new type of compartmented access structures that we present herein. We design ideal perfect secret sharing schemes for these types of access structures that are based on bivariate interpolation. The secret sharing schemes for the two types of compartmented access structures are based on bivariate Lagrange interpolation with data on parallel lines. The secret sharing scheme for the hierarchical threshold access structures is based on bivariate Lagrange interpolation with data on lines in general position. The main novelty of this paper is the introduction of bivariate Lagrange interpolation and its potential power in designing schemes for multipartite settings, as different compartments may be associated with different lines or curves in the plane. In particular, we show that the introduction of a second dimension may create the same hierarchical effect as polynomial derivatives and Birkhoff interpolation were shown to do in Tassa (J. Cryptol. 20:237–264, 2007). A preliminary version of this paper appeared in The Proceedings of ICALP 2006.     

The Pros and Cons of Temporally Near and Distant Action.

The present research demonstrated that in considering an action, considerations against (con) the action tend to be subordinate to considerations in favor of (pro) the action in that cons are considered only if the level of pros is sufficient, whereas pros are considered independent of the level of cons (Studies 1A and IB). The authors therefore concluded that pros constitute a higher construal level than cons and predict, on the basis of temporal construal processes (Y. Trope & N. Liberman. 2003). that pros would be more salient in making decisions for the more distant future, whereas the reverse should hold for cons. As predicted, participants generated more pros and fewer cons toward new exam procedures (Study 2), public policies (Study 3), and personal and interpersonal behaviors (Studies 4-6) that were expected to take place in the more distant future. This research also examined the limiting conditions and the evaluative consequences of these shifts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Risk attitude in small timesaving decisions.

Four experiments are presented that explore situations in which a decision maker has to rely on personal experience in an attempt to minimize delays. Experiment 1 shows that risk-attitude in these timesaving decisions is similar to risk-attitude in money-related decisions from experience: A risky prospect is more attractive than a safer prospect with the same expected value only when it leads to a better outcome most of the time. Experiment 2 highlights a boundary condition: It suggests that a difficulty in ranking the relevant delays moves behavior toward random choice. Experiments 3 and 4 show that when actions must be taken during the delay (thereby helping compare delays), this increases the similarity of timesaving decisions to money-related decisions. In these settings the results reflect an increase in risk aversion with experience. The relationship of the results to the study of non-human time-related decisions, human money-related decisions and human time perception is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abstract and concrete self-evaluative goals.

Assuming that people often hold the abstract goal of acquiring accurate feedback but recognize that acquiring favorable feedback can make the self-evaluative process more comfortable, the authors posited that low-level construals (of how action is performed) would elicit greater self-enhancement motivation than would high-level construals (of why action is performed). Individuals chronically using low-level construals had greater interest in downward social comparison (DSC) and less interest in negative feedback (NF; Studies 1 and 3). Decreases in temporal distance (which foster low-level construals) also elicited greater interest in DSC and less interest in NF (Studies 2 and 4). The latter effect was explained by participants' aversion to inconvenience (Study 5) and not by approach–avoidance conflict (Study 6). These results suggest that the level of abstraction at which people construe self-evaluative situations can influence their feedback preferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal construal and time-dependent changes in preference.

Five studies tested the predictions of temporal construal theory and time-discounting theories regarding evaluation of near future and distant future options (outcomes, activities, products). The options had abstract or goal-relevant features (called high-level construal features) as well as more concrete or goal-irrelevant features (called low-level construal features). The studies varied the valence (positive vs. negative) and the type of valence (affective vs. cognitive) of the low-level and high-level construal features. The results show that the weight of high-level construal features, compared with the weight of low-level construal features, is greater in determining distant future preferences than near future preferences. The implications of the results for extant theories of time-dependent changes in preference are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Promotion and prevention choices between stability and change.

Two situations involving choice between stability and change were examined: task substitution, which deals with choosing between resuming an interrupted activity and doing a substitute activity, and endowment, which deals with choosing between a possessed object and an alternative object. Regulatory focus theory (E. T. Higgins, 1997, 1998) predicts that a promotion focus will be associated with openness to change, whereas a prevention focus will be associated with a preference for stability. Five studies confirmed this prediction with both situational induction of and chronic personality differences in regulatory focus. In Studies 1 and 2, individuals in a prevention focus were more inclined than individuals in a promotion focus to resume an interrupted task rather than do a substitute task. In Studies 3–5 individuals in a prevention focus, but not individuals in a promotion focus, exhibited a reluctance to exchange currently possessed objects (i.e, endowment) or previously possessed objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)