The ‘I’ in extreme responding

Abstract

We investigate the impact of self‐construal on extreme responding in six studies. The results show that people with an independent self‐construal generally answer more extremely to survey items than those with an interdependent self‐construal, especially when the items are self‐relevant (Studies 1a and 1b) and when these items are fluently processed (Study 3). Using an experimental causal chain design, this research also demonstrates that self‐concept clarity drives the effect of self‐construal on extreme responding. In particular, people with an independent self‐construal have a higher level of self‐concept clarity (Study 2a), and self‐clarity leads to an extreme response style (Study 2b). In Study 4, we demonstrate that the difference in extreme responding can partly explain a well‐established self‐construal effect, and we offer a solution to control for the bias in extreme responding in self‐construal research.

Measuring Processing Fluency: One versus Five Items

“…In this regard, researchers usually distinguish between perceptual and conceptual fluency. Perceptual fluency refers to the ease of identifying the perceptual features of a stimulus (e.g., a product design or an advertisement), such as its form, size, or visual details (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004;Schwarz, 2004), and has been shown to be influenced by variables such as repeated exposure (Bornstein & D'Agostino, 1994;Fang, Singh, & Ahluwalia, 2007;Landwehr et al, 2017), the font in which information is presented (Cabooter, Millet, Weijters, & Pandelaere, 2016;DeMotta, Chao, & Kramer, 2016), visual clarity (Whittlesea, Jacoby, & Girard, 1990), complexity (Landwehr et al, 2011), or figureground contrast (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998;Thompson & Ince, 2013). Conceptual fluency, by contrast, refers to the ease of mental operations concerned with assigning meaning to a stimulus (e.g., to a product; Lee & Labroo, 2004;Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004;Reber, Wurtz, & Zimmermann, 2004), and empirical evidence suggests that this fluency can arise when a product is presented in a predictive context or when it is primed by a related construct (Lee & Labroo, 2004).…”

“…That is, of the 120 articles that used a direct measure of the subjective fluency experience, roughly one half (i.e., 45%) used multiple items to measure fluency, whereas the other half (i.e., 51.67%) used only a single item to measure fluency (3.33% used both a multi-item measure and a single-item measure). Notably, most singleitem measures employ some variation of the items easy and/or difficult (e.g., Cabooter et al, 2016;Fang et al, 2007;Lembregts & Pandelaere, 2012;Shen, Jiang, & Adaval, 2010). In fact, the two items difficult and easy, which are also often used within the reviewed multi-item measures (e.g., DeMotta et al, 2016;Labroo & Lee, 2006;Landwehr et al, 2011;Lee, Keller, & Sternthal, 2010), closely reflect the theoretical definition of processing fluency.…”

The calibrated sigma method: An efficient remedy for between-group differences in response category use on Likert scales

“…Third, response scale usage can vary as a function of often manipulated variables such as self-regulatory focus or self-construal (Cabooter, Millet, Weijters, & Pandelaere, 2016;Lalwani, Shrum, & Chiu, 2009). Other experimental manipulations may also lead to a possibly unintended shift in response category usage (e.g., differences in ambient lighting, questionnaire readability, etc.).…”

How does self-concept clarity influence happiness in social settings? The role of strangers versus friends

“…Research has shown that shorter latency when providing self-descriptive traits is an indicator of higher levels of SCC (Cabooter, Millet, et al, 2016;Campbell et al, 1996). This type of measure for SCC also eliminates biases (e.g., social desirability, reactivity) in self-reported measures Campbell, 1990).…”

“…First, they completed the SCC measure. Participants responded to a version of the Twenty-Statement Task, adapted from Cabooter, Millet, Weijters, and Pandelaere (2016), as a measure of SCC. Participants provided as many self-descriptive traits as possible (with a maximum of 10), while we measured the time it took them to complete this task in seconds.…”