This week, I went to a Translators' Conference and my attention was especially caught by a speaker who shared his Phd research academic research work on how consumers perceived culturally 'novel' service providers.
So, how malleable is openness to experience? The bad news is: it is not. Apparently, it is genetically determined at 80%. The only thing you act upon is make people change the way they perceive their environment.
Is it bad? Not really, it is all a matter of spectrum and where you sit in the spectrum. You basically have people with high or low levels of what is called 'Construal Levels' and as a good pragmatic, he said, you just 'work around people's profile to meet their need'.
People with High Construal levels search between similarities between experiences, categorise and conceptualise more broadly - remark: the more an object or event is construed in abstract, higher-level terms, the more weight is typically given to the important, primary information rather than the incidental, secondary information
People with Low Construal levels will not be thinking beyond what is perceived by the senses, will look more at contextual influences operating on the object
In other words, the first SEES THE FOREST, the second SEES THE TREE
Construal Level Theory (CLT) explores the relationship between distance (real spatial or perceived) and the influence on the kind of thinking may result about the object (or the person): will they think of this person concretely (low) or in abstract & broad terms (high)?
According to this theory, an individual's distance from objects and events is associated with how abstractedly he or she will represent them. Distant events are not just less relevant, they are also pictured in a fundamentally different manner than spatially proximal events. To conceptualize distant events, people rely on higher levels of construal (eg schema, prototypes) because higher levels features are less likely to change and be more reliable across different degrees of distance.
When asked to predict outcomes from spatially distant (vs. near) locations, participants were more likely to extrapolate from the general trends and less likely to consider the local deviations (eg after the 9/11 disaster, people who were closer to the scene used more concrete language than speakers who were far away). We are here talking about horizontal distance, but apparently, these things have been measured vertically, and higher ceilings led participants to use broader categories and more abstract language to classify objects. Not sure, it is due to the actual vertical distance or the perception of the size of the room.
Consequences
- This influence the way global and general information over specific and local information may be presented to people. For ex, participants wanted less frequent updates on distant stock exchange figures and on nearby stock figures. Also, people who adopted high level of construals were less likely to seek information about potential unpleasant truth (eg missing an opportunity on the stock market) when it concerned a distant rather than near situation (eg foreign vs local company)
- When people perceive their spatial distance from members of a task group to be smaller, they increasingly construe those members as unique individuals rather than an interchangeable constituent of a group.
- When a university was based in a distant location, participants reacted less favourably to negative feedback that focused on primary rather than secondary aspects of the assignment, but then the university was close by, they were equally disappointed with negative feedback aimed at primary or secondary assignments aspects.
- Focus on primary concerns more easily achieved in distant communication via email etc..Spatially distant negotiators Henderson (2011) should be more successful at focusing on their primary concerns. A person who was far away rather than close was more likely to maintain their priorities across the negotiation issues and consequently, achieve more beneficial agreements.
- Moon found that participants were more persuaded to change their opinion after receiving concrete, detailed messages from a spatially near rather than distant source.
Increased distance from objects and events likely reduces their perceived relevance, as individuals presumably receive fewer benefits (support) as well as burdens (threat) from objects and events that are far away from them. How to change this? when RELEVANCE is held constant, greater distance can increase effortful processing under certain consequences (Fujita et al 2008)
Source
Henderson, M (2011). Construal Level Theory and Spatial Distance - Implications for Mental Representation, Judgement and Behavior. Social Psychology 2011 Vol 42(30): 165-173. University of Texas, US
