Construal level is stable within-person over time : a repeated-measures study of construal level and outcomes

Construal level - essentially, whether you are focusing on the forest or the trees - hasproven itself a consequential and highly-predictive variable in the workplace. This paper aimedto extend the construal level literature in two major areas. First, it attempted to develop andvalidate a new measure of construal level capable of capturing the four dimensions ofpsychological distance that underpin construal level. Second, this study aimed to understandindividual differences in construal level more deeply by capturing a distribution of dailyconstrual levels within-person, and testing whether patterns of stability and fluctuation in thesedistributions are associated with meaningful differences in work-related outcomes between-person.A new measure of psychological distance was constructed with four independent factors,and it was shown to predict several work-related outcomes relevant to construal level. However,the new measure did not correlate with existing measures of construal level. Next, in a repeatedmeasures study, construal level measured with the Behavior Identification Form exhibitedexcellent within-person stability across five days. Average construal level was shown topositively predict visioning behaviors, and negatively predict avoidance motivation. Ultimately,this dissertation bolsters the case that there are stable individual differences in construal levelbetween-person, and provides some initial evidence that these differences have work-relatedconsequences.