The association between psychological distance and construal level: Evidence from an implicit association test.

Abstract

According to construal level theory (N. Liberman, Y. Trope, & E. Stephan, in press;Y. Trope & N. Liberman, 2003), people use a more abstract, high construal level when judging, perceiving, and predicting more psychologically distal targets, and they judge more abstract targets as being more psychologically distal. The present research demonstrated that associations between more distance and higher level of construal also exist on a pure conceptual level. Eight experiments used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) to demonstrate an association between words related to construal level (low vs. high) and words related to four dimensions of distance (proximal vs. distal): temporal distance, spatial distance, social distance, and hypotheticality. In addition to demonstrating an association between level of construal and psychological distance, these findings also corroborate the assumption that all 4 dimensions of psychological distance are related to level of construal in a similar way and support the notion that they all are forms of psychological distance.

Aberrant link between empathy and social attribution style in borderline personality disorder

“…According to this skeptical view, the inherent in-group bias of empathy implies that we feel empathy toward people only when we perceive them as close and familiar (Bloom, 2013(Bloom, , 2017. Social attribution studies tell us that we also judge in-group members differently: we are more willing to see the full picture when judging their behavior, instead of merely attributing behavior to their personalities (Trope and Liberman, 2010;Stephan et al, 2011;Rim et al, 2009;Nussbaum et al, 2003;Bar-Anan et al, 2006). This suggests a close relationship between empathy and social attribution e the extent to which the emotions of others are shared should then be reflected in the way they are perceived e which our results now directly demonstrate.…”

The Effect of Temporal Distance and Social Distance on the Choice of Consumers’ Preferences

“…Temporal distance is defined as how much time (e.g., past or future) separates between the perceiver's present time and the target event [6]. Read, Loewenstein and Kalyanaraman (1999) found that most of people chose virtue products in instant decision making, and people were more inclined to choose vice-virtue mixed mode to buy products in a sequential decision making, but they would prefer vice products in the instant decision making.…”

Sustainable consumption and marketing

“…Low-level construals are related to choices and outcomes that with high certainty will occur, here, now, and to the actor self. Psychological distance and level of abstraction mutually influence each other, and thus abstract representation of choices induces thinking of these choices in psychologically distant terms and psychologically distant representation of choices induces thinking of these choices in more abstract terms (Bar-Anan et al, 2006;Trope & Liberman, 2010).…”

“…The psychological mechanism behind choice behaviour in social dilemmas can be understood in terms of construal level theory (Bar-Anan et al, 2006;Liberman et al, 2007). Construal level theory proposes that objects and events are mentally represented at different levels of abstraction, which influences the type of reasoning and choice of action.…”

“…High-level construals apply to psychologically distant choices or outcomes, and to abstract representations of these choices and outcomes. Conversely low-level construals apply to psychologically near choices and outcomes, and to concrete representations of these choices and outcomes (Bar-Anan et al, 2006;Fujita et al, 2006;Liberman et al, 2007;Todorov et al, 2007;Trope & Liberman, 2010).…”