The Effect Of Different Levels Of Interpretation On Self-control: The Regulation Of Cognitive Load

The Construal Level Theory is closely related to individual life.The Construal Level Theory focuses on the degree of abstract representations on object.The focus point would be different depend on the level of construal.For the object of abstract representation,individuals tend to use high construal level to characterize and pay attention to the integrity of object for the abstract representation.The object of the concrete representation is generally characterized by low construal level of interpretation,emphasizing the details feature.The construal level will affect individual’s thinking and behavior,which is partly achieved by means of representation.The construal level would affect the degree of individual self-control,and the individual will exercise self-control based on the level of construal of the event.When a high level of construal is used to solve the problem,individuals will perform a higher self-control,and when the problem is solved by a low level of construal,individuals will show poor self-control.However,there are studies that have gradually found that the high construal level would reduce individual’s self-control,and the low construal level would enhance individual’s self-control.The researchers found moderating effect of maintaining goal by setting different SST task,but there is no distinction between the maintaining goal or cognitive load.Thus,this study further explores the moderating mechanism,it may be moderated by the cognitive load rather than the goal maintain.In this study,two studies were used to verify the moderating effect of cognitive load.The purpose of Study 1 is to validate the effectiveness of initiating the interpretation of the level of tasks and to validate the findings of Fujita et al.(2006).The purpose of Study 2 is to verify that the effect of construal level on self-control is moderated by high and low cognitive load and consists of two studies of study 2a and study 2b.In study 1,we investigate the delay preference of the subjects,and use the self-control task to review the tendency of the individual to timely and delay results.The task of WHY / HOW is used to initiate the construal level.It is found that the individuals with high construal level tend to prefer the delay compare with low construal level,confirming the findings from Fujita et al.In study 2,we manipulated cognitive load under goal maintenance and non goal maintenance situations,which adopted N-back task and Stroop task respectively.The results showed the moderating effect of cognitive load,the specific performance:(1)In the n-back task,participants in the low-level construal condition performed higher correct rate under 0-back task than participants in the high-level construal,participants in the high-level construal condition performed higher correct rate on the 1-back and 2-back tasks than that in the low-level construal.(2)In the stroop task,participants in the low-level construal condition performed higher correctrate under comparison font size task than that in the high-level construal,participants in the high-level construal condition performed higher correct rate on comparison value size task than participants in the low-level construal.Research results showed that the impact of construal level on self-control would be moderated by the cognitive load.Specificly,in high-contrual level condition individuals performed better than under the difficult task(high cognitive load)than in the low-construal level condition individuals.Participants in low-contrual condition performed better than under the simple task(without cognitive load or low cognitive load)than in the high-construal condition participants.According to the results,the conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)The conclusion that "high construal will enhance the individual’s self control,low construal level will reduce the individual’s self control" is one-sided.(2)The effect of construal level on self-control is moderated by cognitive load,which is manifested in high construal level,the high level of self-control under high cognitive load,in low construal level,the low self-control under no cognitive load or low cognitive load.