Construal Level and its Effect on Willingness to Volunteer as a Leader

Abstract

Research has shown that manipulating someone to think with a high-level construal (more abstractly) leads to greater self-control, acceptance of negative feedback in order to improve, willingness to take on greater responsibilities, and the ability to make decisions that benefit everyone affected by the task. This study used undergraduate students and had them split into high and low-level construal manipulations by use of a why (high-level construal)/ how (low-level construal) task. They were made to think they were going to be put into groups to discuss an article they had read. The study also caused them to believe that one of them would have to volunteer to lead the group by writing a small presentation of their discussion, or deliver an oral presentation. The survey administered asked questions to measure how willing participants were to volunteer as a leader for the both a written presentation as well as an oral presentation. It was hypothesized that those who completed the why task would be more willing to volunteer as a leader for both scenarios than those who completed the how task. It was further hypothesized that participants would be more willing to volunteer for the write up scenario in both conditions than the oral scenario. An independent samples t-test as well as a paired sampled t-test tested these hypotheses. The first hypothesis was not supported since there was not any statistical significance between willingness to volunteer between those in the high-level condition and those in the low-level condition in either scenario. However, there was marginally statistical significance to support the second hypothesis that participants in both conditions were more likely to volunteer for the written presentation than the oral presentation. Future research could study whether construal level affects willingness to volunteer as a leader in a work environment rather than a school environment.