Wpływ fundamentalnych perspektyw poznania społecznego na wartościowanie produktów znanych i nieznanych w reklamach sprawczych i wspólnotowych
Authors: Hryniewicz Konrad 
Published: November 2023

oal (an agent’s perspective) will value more positively an agentic content (e.g. efficiency that brings the agent closer to his goal) rather than a communal one (eg. truthfulness that indicates benefits and no risks). When a person assesses benefits and risks resulting from the behavior of another person (a recipient's perspective), the pattern of evaluation will be inverted. Despite the simplicity and generality of these predictions, this theoretical model fails to explain the evaluation mechanisms in circumstances where the perceived object is close to self (e.g. carrot) or distant from self (e.g. autonomous car). Such explanatory possibilities are introduced by the construal level theory. It describes that the perceived object, depending on the psychological distance from the self, can be constructed concretely (close psychological distance) or more abstractly (higher psychological distance). Close objects (e.g. family members, known products) are constructed with details in mind and retain their special features, while distant objects (e.g. strangers, unknown products) are constructed generally and stereotypically. Taking into account the mental construction of perceived objects, it is crucial to make a more detailed explanation of the patterns of evaluation for agentic and communal content by the agent and the recipient.For this reason, it was assumed that individuals differently value known and unknown products when they pursue their goals (agents), and differently when they do not want to be harmed (recipients). In the first experiment (N = 167) it was observed that people had a more positive evaluation of known products (e.g. carrots) than unknown ones (e.g. salsify). However recipients, due to a stronger weighting of benefits and harms compared to agents, assessed lower the unknown products. Moreover, the agents and the recipients differently value agentic content (e.g. effectiveness) and communal content (e.g. morality) when they evaluate the known and unknown products. Therefore, three experiments were prepared (N = 315 [animated advertisement of a carrot], N = 310 [radio advertisement of a home air filter], N = 239 [radio advertisement of an autonomous car]), in which participants were put into the agent or recipient perspective, and then were asked for the evaluation of a product (known vs unknown) in agentic and communal advertisement experimental condition. The first of the two studies showed that the agents evaluated more positively carrot and home air filter (known products) in agentic advertisement condition than communal one. Whereas the recipients expressed similar evaluations of these products in both advertising conditions. However, in the third study, the agents expressed similar evaluations of the autonomous car (unknown product) in both advertising conditions. But the recipients evaluated the carmore positively  in the communal condition than in the agentic one.The work proposes a psychological mechanism of the construal level of perceived objects which can be introduced in the predictions of the dual perspective model of agency and communion. In this manner, the formulated theory quite accurately explains the above patterns of results in the area of product promotion, and also allows for alternative explanations of the results in the existing literature.