Processing of nonegocentric spatial distance and social distance in a flanker task

Abstract

Psychological distance in the Construal Level Theory refers to an egocentric distance from a stimulus to here, now, oneself, and reality. Yet, nonegocentric distance between two stimuli independent from the perceiver is also common, and nonegocentric spatial and social dimensions are rarely compared. Using an Eriksen flanker paradigm, we examined how the nonegocentric spatial and social distance may be processed. Participants were asked to classify the central target flanked by distractors which were identical to the target or were different words associated with congruent or incongruent responses with the target. We manipulated the spatial or social distance between these two pairs of words which were mapped to different responses, and found that the nonegocentric spatial distance between the stimuli affected the flanker effect, whereas the nonegocentric social distance did not show such a significant effect.