Socially Shared Cognition, Affect, and Behavior: A Review and Integration

Bringing patients out of the gloom: Examining the effects of patient power and affect labeling on emotional experience reflected in emotional judgement

OBJECTIVE

Negative emotions are common among patients in medical settings. It is important to investigate impacts of patient power and affect labeling on emotional experience in patients.

METHODS

Behavioral judgments and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants with high or low patient power made emotional judgments (positive, negative) about neutral faces, as well as investigating how affect labeling (affect labeling, viewing) influenced emotional judgments about neutral faces in participants with low patient power.

RESULTS

Individuals with low patient power made more and faster negative emotion judgements. A larger late positive component (LPC) amplitude was found in negative emotion judgments for individuals with low patient power, a component related to allocation of attentional resources to motivationally salient stimuli. Affect labeling elicited less and slower negative emotion judgments in individuals with low patient power.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that low patient power triggers negative emotion, which can be reduced by affect labeling.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

The current findings provide valuable insights into reducing negative emotions in patients, fostering promising targets for training for medical professionals and education for patients aiming to ensure more humanistic and higher-quality care delivery.

The role of culture in the representation of probiotic foods

Functional foods, and specifically probiotics, are important products present in retail worldwide. Probiotics comprise "live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, can confer a health benefit on the host". This study aimed to investigate the effect of culture on probiotic foods social representation. A total of 818 consumers from seven countries (Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, and Slovenia) participated in the study. A free word association task was performed with the inductor term "probiotic food," followed by lemmatization, categorization, and prototypical analysis of the social representation. The results indicated that the term health was common in all countries studied, as well as other positive aspects such as benefits, well-being, and functional foods. This study helped to shed light and better understand the role of culture in the social representation of probiotics.

How Are We Similar? Group Level Entitativity in Work and Social Groups

Entitativity is essential for individuals to experience a grouping of people as a “group.” However, entitativity is primarily studied at the individual level. If it is truly a fundamental component of group outcomes and processes, it should be considered a group-level construct. We establish that group members can share entitativity perceptions. We propose that entitativity develops in work and social groups through different self-categorization processes. Social groups can take advantage of top-down processes to establish similarity of goals and characteristics. Workgroups use both top-down and bottom-up processes with differing effects on these two forms of similarity. We propose that shared entitativity affects individual level attitudes and behavior. Results support our theoretical model. Shared entitativity explains between 2% and 11% of outcome variance in workgroups and 3% to 14% of the outcome variance in social groups. Shared similarity relates to shared entitativity differently for social and workgroups. Shared entitativity is theoretically and practically important for successful groups.

Learning in Temporary Teams: The Varying Effects of Partner Exposure by Team Member Role

In many workplaces, temporary teams convene to coordinate complex work, despite team members having not worked together before. Most related research has found consistent performance benefits when members of temporary teams work together multiple times (team familiarity). Recent work in this area broke new conceptual ground by instead exploring the learning and performance benefits that team members gain by being exposed to many new partners (partner exposure). In contrast to that new work that examined partner exposure between team members who are peers, in this paper, we extend this research by developing and testing theory about the performance effects of partner exposure for team members whose roles are differentiated by authority and skill. We use visit-level data from a hospital emergency department and leverage the ad hoc assignment of attendings, nurses, and residents to teams and the round-robin assignment of patients to these teams as our identification strategy. We find a negative performance effect of both nurses’ and resident trainees’ partner exposure to more attendings and of attendings’ and nurses’ exposure to more residents. In contrast, both attendings and residents experience a positive impact on performance from working with more nurses. The respective effects of residents working with more attendings and with more nurses is attenuated on patient cases with more structured workflows. Our results suggest that interactions with team members in decision-executing roles, as opposed to decision-initiating roles, is an important but often unrecognized part of disciplinary training and team learning.

“Being on the wrong side of the digital divide”: seeking technological interventions for education in Northeast Nigeria

Purpose

This paper aims to report the initial findings of a project aiming to re-establish basic education in conflict-ravaged states in Northeastern Nigeria and to improve education providers' ability to plan and deliver basic educational services. The authors present a preliminary analysis of Nigerian teachers' access to information communication technology (ICT), their technology skills, as well associated national ICT policies.

Design/methodology/approach

This case study uses results from two co-designed tools, administered using KoboToolbox to Education Managers in the first instance, and teachers in the second. The data from the tools form the basis for analysis.

Findings

In the first instance, educational managers reported a lack of access to technology, the internet and to training and professional development. In the second instance, teachers reported issues present in the classroom environment, including poor infrastructure, a lack of resources and over-crowded classrooms. Very few teachers had access to computers or to the internet.

Research limitations/implications

The 33 educational managers represent a small sample size and may not be fully representative of the region covered. The ICT Capacity Audit tool listed Excel in two different areas – basic Excel skills and using Excel for data analysis – which could have caused confusion for participants. The data collection should be repeated, expanded and compared for consistency. For the team, changes to the proposed (SENSE) box content meant that we were not able to deliver low-tech tools, such as Boogie Boards, or high-tech tools, such as tablets, to schools.

Originality/value

Despite seemingly insurmountable challenges, the research team identified low-tech tools as a feasible resource in the classroom. Existing tools, such as teachers' smartphones and use of the WhatsApp application, can be used for sharing educational resources and providing teacher training. This paper argues that Nigeria needs up-to-date national ICT policies to guide in-country efforts to develop implementation of information technology initiatives for education.

“One Size Does Not Fit All”: Revisiting Team Feedback Theories From a Cultural Dimensions Perspective

Feedback is a critical component of teamwork regulation. Research underscores the importance of feedback processes for its effectiveness in teams and further notes how individual differences can affect these processes. Nonetheless, few have theorized on the cultural dimensions associated with feedback to specify how these can attenuate such processes. We contend that research can be advanced by specifying how cultural dimensions may shape individual perception and processing of feedback and team processing of feedback in homogeneous and heterogeneous teams with respect to cultural dimensions. To address this foundational question, we review and integrate the literature on feedback in teams and culture in teams by (a) incorporating the role of culture in team feedback models, (b) discussing how cultural dimensions could influence the perception and processing of feedback, and (c) highlighting important directions for future inquiries at the intersection of feedback and cultural theories. We discuss the links between cultural dimensions derived from the field of intercultural communication and feedback behaviors and processes and provide propositions concerning culturally informed differences in specific feedback responses at individual and team levels.

Emotions at the Service of Cultural Construction

Emotions signal flaws in the person’s anticipation systems, or in other words, in aspects of models of how the world works. As these models are essentially shared in society, emotional challenges experienced by any individual are of relevance to the community of others. Emotions emerge at the heart of the individual experience, the only place where collective knowledge can be tested against the world. Once felt, emotions generate a cascade of psychological facts: compelling concern, cognitive work, social sharing, and propagation of the social sharing. The larger the fault detected, the more intense the emotion, the more intensive the cognitive work it generates, and the broader the social sharing of the episodic information. Through the social sharing of emotions, common knowledge is updated and enriched.

The architecture of network collective intelligence: correlations between social network structure, spatial layout and prestige outcomes in an office

A social network represents interactions and knowledge that transcend the intelligence of any of its individual members. In this study, I examine the correlations between this network collective intelligence, spatial layout, and prestige or status outcomes at the individual and team levels in an organization. I propose that spatially influenced social cognition shapes which individuals become members of prestigious teams in organizations, and the prestige perception of teams by others in the organization. Prestige is a pathway to social rank, influence and upward mobility for individuals in organizations. For groups, perceived prestige of work teams is related to how team members identify with the group and with their collaborative behaviours. Prestige enhances a team's survivability and its access to resources. At the individual level, I ran two-stage Heckman sample selection models to examine the correlation between social network position and the number of prestigious projects a person is a member of, contingent on the association between physical space and social ties and networks. At the team level, I used linear regressions to examine the relationship among network structure, spatial proximity and the perceived prestige or innovativeness of a project team. In line with my hypotheses, for individuals there is a significant correlation between physical space and social networks, and contingent on that, between social network positions and the number of prestigious projects that a person is a member of. Also in accordance with my hypotheses, for teams there is a significant correlation between network structure and spatial proximity, and perceived prestige. While cross-sectional, the study findings illustrate the importance of considering the spatial domain in examinations of how network collective intelligence is related to organizational outcomes at the individual and team levels.This article is part of the theme issue 'Interdisciplinary approaches for uncovering the impacts of architecture on collective behaviour'.

A Warrior Society: Data From 30 Countries Show That Belief in a Zero-Sum Game Is Related to Military Expenditure and Low Civil Liberties

The aim of this paper was to investigate the relationship between a perceived antagonistic view of social relations (as a struggle for limited resources), measured by the Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG) Scale, national military expenditure, and civil liberties. We used multi-level modeling to analyze data on 5,520 participants from 30 countries, testing the hypothesis that a country's level of militarization and civil liberties would be associated with its people's belief in a zero-sum game. We hypothesized that BZSG is more typical of countries that try to gain more resources or defend their interests and thus have high military expenditure but low civil liberties. The results confirmed the stated hypothesis and showed that a country's high military expenditure and low level of civil liberties correlates positively with citizens' BZSG. The use of multi-level modeling to account for within- and across-country variation is a main contribution of the study. In conclusion, the reported triad of individual beliefs, military expenditure, and civil liberties seems to be beneficial in linking individual-level data with national-level indices that have major importance for the wellbeing of the world.

How Do Friends and Strangers Play the Game Taboo? A Study of Accuracy, Efficiency, Motivation, and the Use of Shared Knowledge

According to common belief, friends communicate more accurately and efficiently than strangers, because they can use uniquely shared knowledge and common knowledge to explain things to each other, while strangers are restricted to common knowledge. To test this belief, we asked friends and strangers to play, via e-mail and face-to-face, the word-description game Taboo, in which objects need to be described without using certain "taboo" words. When descriptions were sent via e-mail, there was no difference in accuracy (number of correct answers) nor in efficiency (number of words per correct answer) between friends and strangers. When descriptions were given face-to-face, friends were more accurate than strangers, but not more efficient (number of seconds and words per correct answer). Shared knowledge did not predict accuracy or efficiency. Hence, our findings do not support the idea that friends only need a few words to understand each other.

Para una Psicología social crítica no construccionista: reflexiones a partir del realismo crítico de Ignacio Martín-Baró

La naturaleza socio-históricamente construida y compartida del conocimiento y de la subjetividad que el construccionismo social parece haberse arrogado en propiedad, forma parte de la historia de la ciencia social. Por otra parte, la crítica al modelo causal-mecanicista como única fuente de conocimiento, que el movimiento construccionista considera una de sus principales aportaciones epistemológicas, se remonta nada menos que a Kant. La verdadera aportación del construccionismo social ha consistido en suprimir la experiencia como fuente del conocimiento y de la subjetividad, negar la existencia de una realidad externa al sujeto, mantenerse ontológicamente mudo frente a ella, y desconfiar de la posibilidad de cambiarla. Parece evidente que sobre estos cimientos no es posible, tal y como se ha pretendido, construir una Psicología social crítica. Frente a ella, y en sus antípodas, el realismo crítico de Martín-Baró parte de la existencia de una realidad objetiva cuyas injusticias y miserias denunció de manera insistente, se vale de métodos cuantitativos para analizarla, la estructura social es su marco de referencia preferido a la hora de estudiar las diversas modalidades y manifestaciones del comportamiento humano, no renuncia a la existencia de verdades parciales y socio históricamente situadas, y define como objetivo de su quehacer teórico el cambio social.

The Prototypical Majority Effect Under Social Influence

Majority views are reported with greater confidence and fluency than minority views, with the difference increasing with majority size. This Prototypical Majority Effect (PME) was attributed generally to conformity pressure, but Koriat et al. showed that it can arise from the processes underlying decision and confidence independent of social influence. Here we examined the PME under conditions that differ in social influence. In Experiment 1, a robust PME emerged in the absence of information about the majority views, but the provision sof that information increased the choice of the majority view and magnified the PME. In Experiment 2, a PME emerged in a minority-biased condition that misled participants to believe that the majority view was the minority view, but the PME was stronger in a majority-biased condition. The results were discussed in terms of a dual-process view: The PME observed under social influence may contain externally driven and internally driven components.

Socially-shared cognition and consensus in small groups

This paper reviews recent work on socially-shared cognition in small groups. Major attention is devoted to the impact of information and preference sharing on the achievement of group consensus and the consequences of consensus (and dissensus) for the group and its members. The literature is organized in terms of the task context in which sharing occurs (i.e., group problem-solving/decision-making tasks vs. group-productivity tasks). Topics covered include information sharing in hidden-profile situations, regulation of socio-cognitive conflict, shared mental models, transactive memory systems, and group discussions involving collective action. The impact of group members' motives on information and preference sharing is highlighted, and more attention to relational (social) motives is suggested.

Eating flowers? Exploring attitudes and consumers' representation of edible flowers

Edible flowers have gained more attention in recent years thanks to their perceived health benefits. Despite this attention, it seems that edible flowers are not popularized for consumption in South America, being considered unfamiliar for some cultures from this continent. In this context, the general goal of the present study was to investigate the three dimensions of social representation theory, the representational field, the information and the attitude of the two conditions of edible flowers: a more general "food made with flowers" and more directional product "yoghurt made with flowers", using Brazilian consumers. To achieve this goal, a free word association task was applied. A total of 549 consumers participated in this study. Participants were divided into two conditions, in which the inductor expressions for the free word association task changed: (a) food products made with flowers and (b) yoghurt made with flowers. Results showed a very positive attitude to both situations, and consumers associated Food products made with flowers to "health care" while the central core of yoghurt made with flowers reflected the innovative condition of this product, supported here by their unpredictable character (information generated).

You and me: The structural basis for the interaction of people with severe and profound intellectual disability and others

Interaction between two people may be construed as a continuous process of perception and action within the dyad. A theoretical framework is proposed in this article that explains the concepts and processes which comprise the interaction process. The article explores the transactional nature of interaction, through analysis of narrative data from two dyads, each comprising a person with severe or profound intellectual and multiple disability and a service worker. The novel application of grounded theory to analyse video data of non-verbal communication data in order to develop the theoretical framework is reviewed. Previously, attuning has been identified as the key process that drives interaction. This article explores the other concepts of the theory proposed, namely, setting, being, stimulus, action, attention and engagement. The article concludes by contrasting this theory of the interaction process with other related concepts and suggests how application of the proposed framework may enhance practice.

Shared Reality: Experiencing Commonality with others' Inner States about the World

Humans have a fundamental need to experience a shared reality with others. We present a new conceptualization of shared reality based on four conditions. We posit (a) that shared reality involves a (subjectively perceived) commonality of individuals' inner states (not just observable behaviors); (b) that shared reality is about some target referent; (c) that for a shared reality to occur, the commonality of inner states must be appropriately motivated; and (d) that shared reality involves the experience of a successful connection to other people's inner states. In reviewing relevant evidence, we emphasize research on the saying-is-believing effect, which illustrates the creation of shared reality in interpersonal communication. We discuss why shared reality provides a better explanation of the findings from saying-is-believing studies than do other formulations. Finally, we examine relations between our conceptualization of shared reality and related constructs (including empathy, perspective taking, theory of mind, common ground, embodied synchrony, and socially distributed knowledge) and indicate how our approach may promote a comprehensive and differentiated understanding of social-sharing phenomena.

A Way Forward

Corruption recovery is a critical but understudied organizational change. We gained unique access to a company that experienced multiple corruption incidents in the months prior to our survey rollout that garnered 2,300+ respondents (71%) across 19 business units. We explored how employee perceptions of leaders’ enactment of a core set of values and of CEO and business unit leaders’ ethical leadership were associated with organizational commitment as these leaders implemented change following corruption. Results indicated that ethical leadership and values enactment were associated with increased organizational commitment. Group-level membership in units implicated in corruption was associated with reduced commitment while membership in business units with increased customer contact was associated with increased commitment. Shared employee perspectives of the ethical leadership of business unit leaders, but not the CEO, were also associated with higher commitment. We also discuss future research, limitations, and implications for management.

Within-culture variation in the content of stereotypes: Application and development of the stereotype content model in an Eastern European culture

There is little and unsystematic evidence about whether the content of stereotypes can vary within a culture. Using the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) as a theoretical framework, in two studies we examined the content of stereotypes in an Eastern European culture, namely Romania. Data were collected from four regions prototypical in terms of economic and social development in Romania, and we examined whether the content of stereotypes varies across these regions. As expected, the findings confirm the applicability of the SCM in Romania to reveal culture-specific stereotypes and provide initial support for within-culture variation in the content of stereotypes. We discuss, in particular, possible reasons for two main findings: a strong one-dimensional structure of stereotypes, and regional differences in stereotype content.

Learning and Knowledge-building in Open-source Communities

Open-source communities are innovative online communities, some of which have recently attracted increasing attention. The study suggests that members of innovative online communities learn and build collective knowledge through the use of ‘technologies’ and the establishment of discursive practices that enable virtual re-experience. Theories of knowledge creation and learning have been reviewed and a social-experiential view of learning has been applied in order to examine the reflective inquiry processes and collective learning practices. The findings demonstrate that re-experience is enabled by code, transactive group memory, instructive content and discourse, and reflective discourse. The manifestations of learning processes lead to concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation at the individual level. Collective reflection, collective conceptualization, virtual experimentation, and participative practice are initiated at the social level. Empirical evidence is based on an interpretive investigation of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) community—an open-source software project that is administered online.

The Symbolic-Interpretive Perspective on Group Dynamics

A symbolic-interpretive perspective as applied to the study of groups is concerned with understanding how group members use symbols and the effects of symbol usage on individual, relational, and collective processes and outcomes, as well as the manner in which groups and group dynamics themselves are products of such symbolic activity. After reviewing philosophical, theoretical, and methodological foundations of a symbolic-interpretive perspective, we offer a conceptual model and review some representative research that illuminates the nature of symbolic predispositions, practices, processes, and products in groups. We conclude by discussing some of the strengths and challenges of studying group dynamics from a symbolic-interpretive perspective.

Shared-Reality Development in Childhood

Many significant changes occur during human childhood, including cognitive, social-cognitive, and socioemotional changes. This article reviews some key phenomena associated with some of these changes and attempts to capture them within a single conceptual umbrella—changes in children’s shared realities with others. Shared reality is the experience that you have an inner state about something (e.g., a feeling or belief or concern about something) that is shared by others (a person or group). Four phases of shared-reality development are proposed: Phase 1 (6–12 months) shared feelings; Phase 2 (18–24 months) shared practices; Phase 3 (3–5 years) shared self-guides; Phase 4 (9–13 years) shared coordinated roles. In each phase, a new way that children interact with and relate to others emerges, and the emergence of each new shared-reality mode has significant self-regulatory and social consequences. These consequences include both major benefits for children and potential costs—trade-offs of being human.

Guiding Organizational Identity Through Aged Adolescence

In this article, the authors reflect on the past two decades of research on organizational identity, looking to its history and to its future. They do not provide a review of the literature, nor do they promote a particular perspective on the concept. Instead, they advocate pluralism in studying organizational identity while encouraging clarity and transparency in the articulation of definitions and core theoretical suppositions. Believing there is no one best approach to the study of organizational identity, their intent is to establish a reference point that can orient future work on organizational identity. They focus on three questions they feel are critical: What is the nomological net that embeds organizational identity? Is organizational identity “real” (or simply metaphoric)? and How do we define and conceptualize organizational identity? Last, they try to anticipate organizational identity issues on the horizon to suggest future directions for theory and research.

Maintaining Interpersonal Continuity in Groups: The Role of Collective Memory Processes in Redistributing Information

Maintaining interpersonal continuity of experience is a process by which groups ensure that new information is available to members who require it. Groups and organizations continuously encounter new information. Sometimes this information is encountered by a single member (or subset of the group), who may have to redistribute it to other members for it to be useful to the group as a whole. Redistribution is conceptualized as a collaborative activity where members recall past episodes during group discussion, thereby creating shared knowledge. Discourse data from an observational study of groups managing a simulation show that redistribution takes place mainly at the outset of meetings. Members with different perspectives on new information participate differently in the redistribution process. Outgoing members (the possessors of new information) initiate a majority of references to the preceding meeting, and contribute the most memories. Incoming (previously inactive) members also participate in redistribution by focusing recall and contributing information of their own from earlier meetings. Redistribution is a dynamic process that evolves in the course of interaction.

Use of Exemplar Surveys to Reveal Implicit Types of Intelligence

Implicit theories of intelligence were investigated via surveys of exemplars of intelligence. Study 1 was a four-sample survey of famous exemplars. These diverse samples reported a similar set of popular exemplars, which clustered into five groups. These groups represented five types of intelligence: scientific, artistic, entrepreneurial, communicative, and moral intelligence. In Study 2, the minimal overlap of intelligence exemplars with those of fame, creativity, and wisdom refuted the possibility that exemplar reports are indiscriminate or solely a result of availability. In Study 3, knowledgeable judges rated the similarity of 50 famous persons to exemplars representing each type of intelligence. All five similarity ratings predicted exemplar popularities. In Study 4, where exemplar reports were not restricted to famous people, 31% were nonfamous (friends, family members, teachers, etc.). The results indicate that five implicit types of intelligence, each represented by highly available exemplars, play a role in people’s implicit theories.

Sex Composition Disrupts the Accuracy of Women’s Metaperceptions of Partners

The effects of sex composition of dyads and surrounding others in groups on the accuracy in women’s expected evaluations (metaperceptions) were investigated using the Group Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (GAPIM). The dataset comprised 26 groups of four to six previously unacquainted participants who completed an unstructured social interaction followed by round-robin evaluations and metaperceptions on evaluative adjectives. Women expected less positive evaluations from opposite-sex partners, and this did not vary by the sex composition of surrounding others. However, women were less accurate in predictions of how they were evaluated by male partners (compared with female partners) if women were the majority in the surrounding group. Also, women formed less accurate metaperceptions of female partners when women were the minority, rather than the majority in the surrounding context. Implications for theory development in intergroup relations and contributions of the GAPIM to diversity research are discussed.

Building sense out of situational complexity

There is growing consensus among scholars that the organizational environment has become increasingly complex, dynamic, and socially demanding. Leaders and followers navigate through a cognitive paradox where assessments of the situation can be at once cognitively overpowering and cognitively deceiving. In this article, we propose that complex situations can lead to ambivalence, a psychological state caused by contrasting evaluative orientations toward an object or situation. We propose that ambivalence can become a functional cognitive process that provides cognitive discomfort and fluidity for joint contextual interpretation when leaders and followers share ambivalent cognitive states. We develop a theoretical model of how this process unfolds, highlighting how and when situational complexity can trigger leader and follower ambivalence leading to distinct interpretative processes. Taken together, we explain how ambivalence can facilitate collaborative contextual interpretation within complex situations. In so doing, we advance the current understanding of ambivalence by explicating its role in creating functional leadership processes.

USER-CENTRIC INNOVATIONS IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT — SYSTEMATIC IDENTIFICATION OF LEAD USERS HARNESSING INTERACTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE ONLINE-TOOLS

Corporate innovation management geared to long-term success calls for a strategy to grow innovations into a substantial competitive advantage. This, however, coincides with an enormous failure-rate at the market, especially in the field of breakthrough innovations. Hence, in recent times, companies are trying to alleviate the risk of lacking user-acceptance through opening their innovation processes to external actors, particularly customers. The method of integrating lead users is determined by the effective and systematic identification of leading-edge customers, which is considered to be a critical phase within this approach. With the arrival of Web 2.0 applications, there is a huge potential to improve these selection processes. Our research into online communities and weblogs scrutinised the search criteria in an online environment and revealed the following characteristics as crucial factors for the online identification of lead users: being ahead of a market trend, high expected benefits, user expertise and motivation, extreme user needs as well as opinion leadership and an online commitment.

Can group discussion promote cooperative ultimatum bargaining?

The influence of discussion-induced shared cognition on bargaining behavior was examined. Three studies tested the hypothesis that shared cognition regarding the best method for reaching a bargaining agreement would decrease the frequency of selfish offers. Consistent with this prediction, participants who engaged in such a group discussion made less selfish offers than those who did not discuss (all studies) or those who engaged in a group discussion regarding commonalities that they shared (Study 2). Study 3 showed that the discussion effect was mediated by shared cognition developed through the discussion. Thus, discussion regarding how best to reach bargaining settlements may develop shared cognition that assists in cooperative bargaining. Implications and limitations of the studies are discussed.

Power differences in the construal of a crisis: the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001

In this research, we examine the relationship between power and three characteristics of construal-abstraction, valence, and certainty-in individuals' verbatim reactions to the events of September 11, 2001, and during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. We conceptualize power as a form of social distance and find that position power (but not expert power) was positively associated with the use of language that was more abstract (vs. concrete), positive (vs. negative), and certain (vs. uncertain). These effects persist after controlling for temporal distance, geographic distance, and impression management motivation. Our results support central and corollary predictions of Construal Level Theory (Liberman, Trope, & Stephan, 2007; Trope & Liberman, 2003) in a high-consequence, real-world context, and our method provides a template for future research in this area outside of the laboratory.