The Effects Of Construal Level And Win-loss Framing On The Intertemporal Choice

The construal level theory is belong to "purely cognitive orientation".The core idea of construal level theory is the individual’s mental construal of objects determine the react of these objects. Many researchers have found that people tend to construal psychologically distant objects in terms of high level, abstract and decontextualized aspects, whereas construal the same object in terms of low level, detailed and contextualized features if the object is psychologically near. Therefore,there is different between the delay benefit which means psychologically distant and the immediate benefit which means psychologically near.Researchers have also found that people would make different choices during intertemporal choice when they in different contexts. This research aimed to investigate the effects of the high or low construal level and the win-loss framing on the intertemporal choice. Previous research have only considered the construal level with a single factor, for these reasons this research addition the win-loss framing and test the interaction of the two kinds of factors and its influence on intertemporal choice. This research selected college students as the subjects of experiment research.First, activated the participants high or low construal level through the paper and pen test, then set up two different context of intertemporal choice, to examine both of these factors impact on intertemporal choice of subjects. Analysis of the data found that the construal level’s main effect signigicantly, and the win-loss framing’s main effect signigicantly too, and the interaction of these two factors is edges significantly. So the conclusion mainly include the following:(1) Under the two kinds of priming effects, the participants from loss framing is higher than the participants from win framing on the delay options frequency and the subjective value.(2) Under the win-loss framing, the participants from high construal level is higher than the participants from low construal level on the delay options frequency and the subjective value.(3) The interaction of the contrual level and the win-loss framing is significant edgily. (4) The simple main effect shown that the participants from high level is higher than the participants from low level on the delay options frequency but this phenomenon only founded in the win-framing.(5) The simple main effect shown that there is significant different between two framing under the low construal level.