We have Yaacov Trope, New York University, visiting and giving a talk in the Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Colloquium this week (title and abstract follow).

Expansive and contractive regulatory scope

Adaptive functioning requires both being able to immerse ourselves in the here and now, with people who are like us and with us, contracting our Regulatory Scope, and being able to move beyond the local social environment to expand our Regulatory Scope. In order to effectively pursue desired ends that vary from the immediate to the very distant, humans have evolved a range of mental and social mechanisms to support both contractive and expansive Regulatory Scope and the ability to switch between them. Across these mechanisms, it is possible to distinguish a hierarchy of levels that vary in level of abstractness from a low-level concrete mode to a high-level abstract mode. The research that I will describe suggests that low-level modes of operation support contractive Regulatory Scope, whereas high-level modes of operation support expansive Regulatory Scope.