You may have been told more than once to stand up straight. Well, if you’re seeking to make a big-picture decision, then you should take that command to heart.
A new study by Pankaj Aggarwal and Min Zhao, professors at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management, shows that when people believe they’re physically higher up, they take more broad-minded approaches to decisions.
“Consumers perceiving themselves to be physically ‘high’ or elevated are more likely to adopt a global perceptual processing and higher level of conceptual construal, while those perceiving themselves to be physically ‘low’ are more likely to adopt a local perceptual processing and lower level of conceptual construal,” Aggarwal and Zhao wrote in the study’s abstract.
“Mental construal” can be loosely defined as “where your head is at” when making decisions.
“This difference in level of construal also impacts product choices involving trade-offs between long-term benefit and short-term effort,” the authors wrote.
For example, a higher-level of mental construal results in “why” questions, whereas a lower level mental construal aligns with “how” questions.
In other height news, please consider another recent study that shows people are more excited and creative when they stand during meetings. Now, if we could all have standing meetings on the top floor, then all the world’s problems would be solved, right?
(photo credit: Arjan Almekinders via photopin cc)
