Preparing for Novel Events: How Novelty Changes Global Versus Local Processing Styles
Novelty theory is based on the following assumptions: 1) Novelty is a construct and depends on situational factors. 2) Novelty is not always threatening. 3) Because people have little concrete information about "new" events they usually think abstractly about them. 4) New information needs to be integrated and because such integration processes profit from a broad conceptual scope, people start a holistic processing style when preparing for novel events. 5) Holistic processing styles can be habitualized and can automatically carry over to other, unrelated tasks. A series of experiments using diverse measurements of abstract vs. concrete processing confirm the hypotheses. Generally, the studies show that participants process information more abstractly when told a task is "new" compared to when told a task is "old". Implications of the studies for research on cognition, emotion and motivation will be discussed and consequences for applied fields (e.g., consumer aspects; health related issues) and the social domain (e.g., first encounters with strangers, intergroup behavior) will be examined.
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