Temporal distance and the perception of political proposals in terms of their favorability, feasibility and desirability

• Fifty-one university college students were presented with 10 political proposals, recently advanced in Sweden. For each participant, each of the 10 proposals  was described as being implemented in the near future and in a more distant future. The participants were asked to judge the proposals in terms of their favorability, desirability, and feasibility. In line with Construal Level Theory (CLT, Trope & Liberman, 2010), it was found that feasibility better predicted favorability of close future proposals (as compared to temporally distant proposals) whereas the opposite pattern was found for desirability.  Also in line with CLT, correlational data suggested that participants to a larger extent as compared to the near future tailored their representations of the distant future such that feasibility co-varied positively with the desirability of a proposal, suggesting an optimism bias. Presumably, this was possible because feasibility is less concrete and more malleable for more distant events.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Tillämpad psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Applied Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Östersjö- och Östeuropaforskning

Baltic and East European studies

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)