Does Construal Level Affect the Development of Automaticity? Abstract versus Concrete Mindsets and Choice Repetition

Through practice, erratic behaviors become consistent. However, considerable variability exists in the time it takes for newly learned relations between cues and behaviors to become automatic. The present research investigated whether construing action abstractly vs. concretely moderates the development of automaticity. In combination with a construal-level manipulation, participants completed a speeded response-time task in which they repeatedly chose between two possible choices (e.g., “business” or “visitors”) as descriptors of a target word (e.g., “company”). We tested two pre-registered hypotheses that participants in the concrete (vs. abstract) group would (1) show a greater speed-up in response times across repetitions; (2) more quickly settle on a consistent preference. Despite strong evidence of the efficacy of our construal-level manipulation, neither hypothesis was supported