Regulating Risk or Risking Regulation? Construal Levels and Depletion Effects in the Processing of Health Messages

Nidhi Agrawal, Echo Wen Wan · Journal of Consumer Research · 2009 · marketing · 10.1086/597331 · record agrawal2009-depletion-construal
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית
Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. Coded 'replicated' because experiment 2 reproduces the experiment 1 pattern and the paper additionally reports an unpublished internal replication using the standard cross-off-letters/anagram depletion tasks plus a follow-up cookie-consumption study; all of these are the authors' own, so this is internal rather than independent replication. The paper states very few limitations about itself — most of its self-critical material is phrased as future-research directions — which is why the limitations array holds only two entries. The mediation analyses (tiredness at low construal; perceived higher-level benefits at high construal) are the core of the mechanism claim but their numeric detail sits inside PDF-mangled strings such as 'b p (cid:1).50', so no statistics were quoted. 2026-08-19 and 2026-08-25 schema-0.3 passes: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.
The quality of the text these quotes were cut from. operator-codes-not-extractable: 0 Highwire operator codes in an internal file (0 distinct, commonest -) - '/H11002' is a minus. THE CODE IS FUSED TO THE NUMBER THAT FOLLOWS IT, so 'M /H1100520.3' is 'M = 20.3' and a reader sees a garbage token where the relation was. 20 live quotes, 0 carrying a code.
Some quotes on this page contain (cid:NN). The PDF this text was extracted from encodes 3 characters in a way that names no letter, so the extractor could not say what they were. The quotes keep them because a quote is reproduced exactly or it proves nothing — the marks are the source’s, not the tagging’s.
Some words in these quotes contain the wrong character. The PDF this text was extracted from substituted 124 characters inside a word — a currency sign or a stray accent where a letter pair belongs, as in signi¢cantly for significantly, or a single ligature glyph, as in confidence. They are valid characters in the wrong place, so they survive every encoding check. The quotes keep them for the same reason as above, and a search of this page will not find the affected words.
How to read this page. The article itself is not reproduced here — this paper is not cleared for redistribution, so what follows is the tag layer alone. The evidence sentences are withheld with the article. The table at the foot lists every tag the record carries; each row names the facet it belongs to, and the whose words column says whether the tag records the paper's own wording or the tagger's sentence about the paper. Every tag links to each other paper in the corpus carrying it. The machine-readable edition of the same thing is the TEI file beside this one, where the tags live in standOff, and the article is at its publisher via the link below. When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.

Tags on this paper

Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 5 concept tags on this paper, 4 are grounded in a quoted sentence. 1 carry the tagger's gloss of what the term means in this paper, which is not something the article can license.
depletion effect construal level self-control carryover / sequential task effect resource accessibility cues resource accessibility goal focus health messages ANOVA p-value behavioural-experiment

Legend

relation to other workclaim_relationshow this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim typeclaim_typethe shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edgeconcept_edgesan asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
conceptconceptsan idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tagcontent_tagsa finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
controlcontrolsan experiment run to eliminate a rival explanation
limitationlimitationswhat the paper says its evidence cannot support
methodmethodhow the paper produced its evidence
phenomenonphenomenonthe effect or regularity under study
sensesensesa distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it
transfertransfersa method or concept carried in from another field

The paper

The full text is not reproduced here. This article is not cleared for redistribution, so the page carries the tag layer only. Its evidence sentences are withheld; the grounding status remains with each tag, and the article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1086/597331. The reading view exists for the papers whose licence permits it.

Every tag on this page

claim_relations 3 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 1 · concepts 4 · content_tags 7 · controls 2 · limitations 2 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 4 · transfers 1

Relations on this page carry a quotation for the claim. Where a relation was separately evidenced — and so tested against the vocabulary for its type — the row says so; none of 1 relation here carry that mark. The rest are the tagger’s reading of the sentence quoted beside them.

This record holds no mechanisms. A layer is empty when the tagger recorded nothing in it — which is not the same as the paper having nothing to record.

facettagfieldconf.whose words
claim_typemechanism
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_typethe paper's words
phenomenonthe depletion effect in self-control
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phenomenonthe paper's words
methodbehavioural-experiment
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methodthe paper's words
limitationsTime spent reading was used as the main self-control measure, which the authors acknowledge need not indicate careful processing; they added a recall measure in response.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: the self-control measure: SPENDING MORE TIME ON READING MIGHT NOT IMPLY BETTER SELF-CONTROL IF PARTICIPANTS WERE NOT CAREFULLY PROCESSING THE MESSAGE
limitations[0]the tagger's words
limitationsThe supporting recall analyses for experiment 2 are asserted rather than reported, so they cannot be evaluated from the article itself.
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
what this limits: the experiment 2 recall support: DUE TO SPACE CONSTRAINTS, THESE DATA ARE NOT REPORTED IN DETAIL HERE
limitations[1]the tagger's words
transfersthe health-risk literature's account of how messages at different levels of construal are processed, carried into consumer research on self-regulatory depletion
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
transfers[0]0.85the tagger's words
controlsrisk estimation measured in the same participants both before and after the construal-level manipulation
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
eliminates: between-person differences in baseline risk perception, which a post-only comparison would leave inside the effect · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held
controls[0]0.85the tagger's words
controlsthe moderating effect of construal level on depletion replicated in a further experiment using the standard tasks of the literature - the paper states the result and marks the study 'not reported in this article'
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
eliminates: the effect depending on the particular tasks these authors chose - the replication uses the tasks the field already uses, and its outcome is asserted without being shown · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held
controls[1]0.85the tagger's words
conceptsdepletion effect
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concepts[0]the paper's words
conceptsconstrual level
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concepts[1]the paper's words
conceptsself-control
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also in: self-control
concepts[2]the paper's words
conceptsresource accessibility cues
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
concepts[4]0.95the paper's words
sensesA MODERATOR THAT REVERSES THE SIGN RATHER THAN WEAKENING IT: `Quotation withheld.` Not attenuation - inversion. So `depletion reduces self-control` is true at one level of a moderator and false at the other, and an edge carrying `effect_direction: reduces` would be wrong for half of this paper's own design. Fourth record today where the axis vocabulary has no single sign to record
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[0]0.95the tagger's words
sensesDEPLETION WORKS THROUGH A SELF-ASSESSMENT, NOT THROUGH A RESOURCE: `Quotation withheld. Hence, they exert less self-control only when they assess themselves as depleted.` The person reads their own tiredness as evidence about how much control they have left, and acts on the reading. That makes the depletion effect a judgement about oneself rather than a fact about oneself - and it predicts that anything which changes what you consult will change the effect, which is exactly what the construal manipulation does
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[1]0.95the tagger's words
sensesAND THE CONTROL THAT TURNS THAT FROM AN INTERPRETATION INTO A RESULT: `Quotation withheld.` The resource state is held constant and the effect still disappears. Same tiredness, different use of it. That is the sentence that locates the phenomenon in what the person consults rather than in what they have, and without it the construal result would be compatible with high-level construal simply making people less tired
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[2]0.95the tagger's words
sensesTWO CONSTRUAL LEVELS, TWO DIFFERENT MEDIATORS, ONE DESIGN: `A focus on resource limitations, specifically feelings of tiredness, MEDIATED the effect ... for individuals at LOWER construal levels`, while `At higher construal levels, individuals' perceptions of the benefits to goals attained by performing the second task mediated the treatment effects.` The moderator does not turn one mechanism up and down - it swaps which mechanism is running. A record that stored only `construal level moderates depletion` would lose the fact that the two arms are not the same process at different strengths
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
senses[3]0.95the tagger's words
claim_relationsbuilds-on → Fujita et al. (2006), who called for integrating construal level theory with ego-depletion models
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[0]the tagger's words
claim_relationsextends → Fujita et al. (2006)
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[1]the tagger's words
claim_relationscontradicts → Fujita et al. (2006)
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
claim_relations[2]the tagger's words
concept_edgesresource accessibility cues —causes→ self-control
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
strength of the relation: 0.85 · note: THE DIRECTION IS CONDITIONAL AND THE CONDITION IS IN THE FIRST FOUR WORDS: 'At low-level construals'. Reading a tiredness cue lowers self-control only for people construing concretely; at high construal the same tiredness does nothing, which the third sense quotes. Weight 0.85 for that reason - the edge is true inside one arm of the design and the arm is named in the quote.
concept_edges[0]0.95the tagger's words
content_tagsexerting self-control on a prior task reduces self-control on a later task (the depletion effect)
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[0]the tagger's words
content_tagshigh-level construal reduces the resource focus and can even reverse the depletion effect
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsdepleted participants showed poorer self-control than non-depleted participants
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.findings[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsconstrual level
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.variables[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsdepletion effect
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
content_tags.definitions[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsANOVA
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also in: ANOVA
content_tags.statistics[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsp-value
Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.
also in: p-value
content_tags.statistics[1]the tagger's words

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