Goals or means: how psychological distance influences depletion effects

Abstract

This paper examines how construal level influences the performance of consecutive self-control which requires sustained effort and is vulnerable to self-control resource depletion effect. We propose that at higher-level construals, individuals focus on self-relevant goals (e.g., one’s health goal) and will allocate self-control resources to the second self-control task depending on the importance of the task to their goal. At lower-level construals, individuals attend to resource accessibility and will perform self-control based on their perceived fatigue involved in exerting self-control resource. In three experiments we test this proposition in the consumer health context and examine the underlying processes.