Construal Level and Perceived Distance - A Psychophysical Test of Construal Level Theory

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Construal Level and Perceived Distance - A Psychophysical Test of Construal Level Theory Mark Yates1* and James Scully1 1 University of Melbourne, Australia The world that we experience through our senses is restricted to the "here and now". In our minds, however, we can overcome this limitation - we can take the perspective of others, project ourselves into the future and the past, into distant locations, and into hypothetical scenarios. This mental self-projection is frequently referred to as mental simulation, and is a ubiquitous feature of human thought. A recent theory - construal level theory (CLT; Trope and Liberman, 2010) proposes that a common characteristic of these various simulations is that they can be located on a dimension of psychological distance from the self. For instance, a simulated event that will take place in the far future, or is unlikely to occur, is psychologically distant. CLT also proposes a link between psychological distance and the way in which an object or event is construed (represented), with increasing levels of psychological distance associated with higher (more abstract, schematic, decontextualized) levels of construal. According to CLT, altering the psychological distance of an object or event affects the level at which it is construed, and conversely, changing the level at which the object is construed affects its perceived psychological distance. We tested this latter prediction with two experiments. In both experiments, construal level was manipulated using Navon hierarchical letter stimuli (Navon, 1977), a manipulation previously employed within the CLT literature. The effect of this manipulation on the perceived spatial distance between two points located on a radial axis from the observer was assessed using a psychophysical approach in Experiment 1 (n = 72) and using written distance estimates in Experiment 2 (n = 36). No effect of construal level on perceived distance was observed in either experiment. A central prediction of CLT was not supported by our data. Keywords: Psychophysics, psychological distance, Construal level theory, Distance estimates, Global-versus-Local Processing Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Cognition and Executive Processes Citation: Yates M and Scully J (2015). Construal Level and Perceived Distance - A Psychophysical Test of Construal Level Theory. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00308 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Dr. Mark Yates, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia, mark_jeremy_yates@hotmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Mark Yates James Scully Google Mark Yates James Scully Google Scholar Mark Yates James Scully PubMed Mark Yates James Scully Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.