The Effect Of Construal Level And Psychological Distance On Undergraduates' Affective Forecasting In Purchasing Behavior

Affective Forecasting refers to people's anticipation and estimation of emotions that future events may bring.For example,the construal level of an event is abstract or concrete,and does it affect the individual's affective forecasting? Does time distance impact affective forecasting? Is the individual's own or other person's affective forecasting the same? And,when the individual predicts emotion,the above various factors may affect them at the same time.For example,in different construal level,is affective forecasting in different temporal,spatial and social distance events the same? The above time,space and social distance are collectively referred to psychological distance.The current empirical research of how do these factors affect affective forecasting is relatively rare.Therefore,the study of the impact of the psychological distance and construal level in affective forecasting,and the understanding of adjusting people's affective forecasting are of some significance.Previous studies have shown that individuals tend to characterize events as low levels of interpretation(specific)at near psychological distance.While at far psychological distances,individuals have a higher level of interpretation(abstract).Based on the previous studies,this paper explains the influence of psychological distance and construal level on the strength of affective forecasting from the perspective of cognitive matching.In this study,the author selects the consumer context to study,uses the self-report method to measure the emotion,evaluates the affective forecasting strength through the scale,uses the abstract/specific commodity information to manipulate construal level,and discusses how the time,space,and social distance at different construal level affect the individual's affective forecasting,and examines how the match or mismatch between construal level and psychological distance affect affective forecasting.In experiment 1,118 college students were taken as experimental subjects,and the experimental design of 2 subjects was used(construal level: high / low)× 2(time distance: far / near).In Experiment 2,135 college students were taken as subjects,and experimental design of 2 subjects was used.The experiment 2 consisted of 111 college students as test subjects,and 2(construal level: high / low)× 2(space distance: far / near)was used.In experiment 3,111 college students were taken as experimental subjects,and the experimental design of 2(construal level: high / low)×2(social distance: far / near)experimental inter-experimental design was used to explore the interaction between psychological distance and construal level on the strength of affective forecasting,and to explore the value of the event mediating effect of affective forecasting.The experimental results show that:(1)When the psychological distance matches construal level,affective forecasting strength is greater,i.e.,far/near,temporal/spatial and social distance matches the high/low level of interpretation level,the individual's affective forecasting strength is stronger(more aggressive).When the psychological distance is far/near inconsistent with the high/low level of interpretation,the individual's affective forecasting strength is smaller;(2)the matching between psychological distance and construal level impact affective forecasting by the mediation of event value.