Immediately following these instruc

Immediately following these instructions, the level of construal at which participants were to consider the indulgence goal was manipulated using a laddering technique based on Fujita et al. (2006). For the low-level construal condition, participants were asked to consider how they might pursue the goal. The page consisted of the how instructions and a series of four descending boxes in which to explain how they would pursue the goal. Participants filled in each lower box with descriptions of more concrete and subordinate considerations related to enacting the statement written in the prior box. In the high-level condition, box 1 was at the bottom and participants moved upward to box 4, explaining why they might want to pursue the indulgence goal. In each successive box, they were asked to abstract to a more superordinate level, that is, a high level of construal. This procedure was intended to help participants connect the indulgence goal to their enduring values, as is generally expected in high-level construals.