Construals - Major Empirical Evidence

Major Empirical Evidence

In 1946, Solomon Asch directed one of the earliest known empirical studies of human construal. In this study, Asch focused on the formation of character impressions by asking each participant to study a list of personality traits and make judgments and/or inferences about the possessor of each of these listed traits. The results of this study demonstrated two different types of phenomena: the primacy effect and the disproportionate effect of certain types of words. For the primacy effect, those personality traits that were listed earlier in the list seemed to have a much more affective impact on the subject's impression of the person with that trait. However, Asch's finding that there was a variability in the effect of categorical terms such as "warmth" and "coldness" hint that those listed traits were "susceptible to variable interpretation or construal-- and the specific meaning attached depended upon the more global impressions adopted by the subjects"

In a study headed by Lee D. Ross, David Green, and Pamela House (1976), eighty Stanford University undergraduates were asked if they were willing to walk around campus for at least thirty minutes while wearing a large sandwich board sign that read "Eat at Joe's" and record the responses of their peers to this novel situation. The subjects were not only asked to answer whether or not they would participate, but they were also asked to estimate other people's responses, and make inferences about the disposition of each group of people based on their agreement and disagreement to participate. Overall, the experimenters found that "those who agreed to participate thought that an average of 62% of their peers would agree"; but, those who disagreed with participating thought that an average 33% of their peers would agree to the job". Furthermore, those who agreed had more extreme inferences about the personal dispositions of those who disagreed, and vice versa. The results indicated that the subjects failed to recognize that their peer's construal or interpretation of the situation may be quite different from the perspective they personally take. (see also false consensus effect)

In 2004, Lee D. Ross, a professor of social psychology at Stanford University, developed a theory of a type of construal that he calls "naïve realism." In a simple experiment, Ross took peace proposals created by Israeli negotiators, labeled them as Palestinian proposals, and told Israeli citizens that the ideas in the proposal were the ideas that Palestinians wanted the Israeli to adopt. Then, he took the original proposals and told the Israeli subjects that ideas on the proposal were the ideas that the Israelis wanted the Palestinians to adopt. The Israeli citizens liked the proposals from the Israelis to the Palestinians more than the proposal from the Palestinians to the Israelis, even though they were the same proposal.

"Even when each side recognizes that the other side perceives the issues differently, each thinks that the other side is biased while they themselves are objective and that their own perceptions of reality should provide the basis for settlement." ~ Lee Ross