Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

SPSP Annual Meeting 2010

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Web of Science (2)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Burrus, J.
Right arrow Articles by Roese, N. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Burrus, J.
Right arrow Articles by Roese, N. J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Long Ago It Was Meant to Be: The Interplay Between Time, Construal, and Fate Beliefs

Jeremy Burrus

Neal J. Roese

University of Illinois

Fate means that an event was meant to be, that is, predetermined by prior unseen forces. Most people believe in fate, which seems at odds with similarly pervasive beliefs that alternative past actions would have brought about different circumstances (i.e., counterfactual beliefs). Two experiments revealed that construal level accounts for the relative plausibility of fate versus counterfactual explanations. Construal was manipulated in Experiment 1, such that goal pursuits framed in abstract ("why?") as opposed to concrete ("how?") terms heightened fate but not counterfactual attributions. Extending this finding, Experiment 2 showed that fate judgments were higher for temporally distant than recent past events, an effect mediated by construal perceptions. Neither counterfactual nor luck judgments varied with temporal distance. These findings help to explain how individuals explain complicated yet meaningful life events while extending the reach of Trope and Liberman's (2003) construal-level theory.

Key Words: fate • counter factual • construal • luck • time • temporal focus

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 8, 1050-1058 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167206288282
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Pers Soc Psychol RevHome page
K. Epstude and N. J. Roese
The Functional Theory of Counterfactual Thinking
Personality and Social Psychology Review, May 1, 2008; 12(2): 168 - 192.
[Abstract] [PDF]