Self-Other Decision-Making Differences

In everyday life, decision making involves not just the self but the consideration of others. Researchersinvestigated the self-other decision-making differences and found that decisions people make for others aredifferent from their decisions for selves. Construal-level theory (CLT) proposes that people make evaluations,judgments and choices with respect to our construal of objects rather than the objects themselves, and thatconstrual depend not only on the actual attributes of the objects but also on the object’s psychological distance.Thus, psychological distance is an important variable to understanding the self-other decision-making differences.Scholars have found the evidence of time distance and probability from an event affects people’s decisionsregarding that event. According to CLT, different psychological distance dimensions are associated. They mayshare a common psychological mechanism. So it can be speculated that the social distance is also likely to affectdecision making. In addition, the effect of level of construal on perceived psychological distance also beendemonstrated. However, the effect of level of construal on the relationship between psychological distance and thelevel of construal has not aroused the concern of researchers. Thus, the present study investigate the effect ofsocial distance on decision-making, and explore whether the psychological distance effect of construal are affectedby different levels of construal stimulus. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) In the condition of high level and low level of construal, the high-level construction characteristics ofoption were seen as more important than low-level construction characteristics of option in self and otherdecision-making.(2) The effect of high-level construction characteristics on choice increased over social distance, whereas theeffect of low-level construction characteristics on choice decreased over social distance.(3) Both in the condition of self and other, the effect of high-level construction characteristics on choiceincreased over construal level, whereas the effect of low-level construction characteristics on choice decreasedover construal level.