Confidence Focuses You on the Forest, Doubt Turns You to the Tree: Confidence, Construal Frame, and Information Processing

A large literature demonstrates that a state of confidence reduces information processing compared to a state of doubt. This paper presents an alternative formulation that either confidence or doubt can increase or decrease information processing based on the construal of information. We propose that feeling relatively confident activates an abstract level of construal, whereas feeling relatively doubtful activates a concrete level of construal, and that states of doubt increase processing when information is framed in a concrete manner, whereas states of confidence increase processing when information is framed in an abstract manner. Four experiments test these propositions.

Citation:

Echo Wen Wan and Derek D. Rucker (2011) ,"Confidence Focuses You on the Forest, Doubt Turns You to the Tree: Confidence, Construal Frame, and Information Processing", in AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Zhihong Yi, Jing Jian Xiao, and June Cotte and Linda Price, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 31-32.