Desirability or Feasibility Self–Other Decision-Making Differences

• Published in: Personality & social psychology bulletin Vol. 39; no. 2; pp. 144 - 155
• Main Authors: Lu, Jingyi, Xie, Xiaofei, Xu, Jingzhe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.02.2013; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Activities of daily living; Construal; Decision Making; Desirability; Differences; Ego; Everyday life; Experiments; Feasibility; Female; Humans; Information Seeking Behavior; Judgment; Male; Preferences; Social Desirability; Social psychology; Theory; feasibility; decision process; self–other decision making; desirability; construal level theory
• ISSN: 0146-1672; 1552-7433
• DOI: 10.1177/0146167212470146

Making decisions for the self and providing advice to others are common in daily life. The current research examines the differences in weight that people attach to desirability and feasibility when deciding for themselves versus others. Based on construal level theory, we propose that in a decision-making process, individuals who decide for others tend to focus more on desirability than on feasibility compared with those who decide for themselves. Across five experiments, the predicted self–other differences were observed in preference in the decision stage (Experiments 1a and 1b), information seeking in the predecision stage (Experiment 2), and information recall in the postdecision stage (Experiments 3a and 3b). These findings show that decision behaviors are determined by the decision target (i.e., for whom such decisions are made).