
The Bidirectional Relationship between Psychological Distances and Construal Level
Hou-Chao LV
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2012, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (6) : 1519-1523.
The Bidirectional Relationship between Psychological Distances and Construal Level
Since the temporal construal was put forward by Liberman and Trope, it has formed a unified construal level theory, which extended from temporal distance to psychological distance. Psychological distance refers to the perception of when an event occurs, where it occurs, to whom it occurs, and whether it occurs. Psychological distance is egocentric: Its reference point is the self, here and now, and the different ways in which an object might be removed from that point—in time distance, space distance, social distance, and hypotheticality—constitute different distance dimensions. Construal level refers to the perception of what will occur: the processes that give rise to the representation of the event itself. There are two criteria that can be used to distinguish which features of an item or an event are more high level and which are more low level. The first criterion reflects centrality: Changing a high level feature has a greater impact on the meaning of an object than does changing a low level feature. The second criterion reflects subordination: The meaning of low level features depends on high level features more than vice versa. This paper discussed the bidirectional relationship between psychological distance and construal level. Psychologically distant makes people tend to construal objects in terms of high level, abstract and decontextualized aspects (high level construal), whereas psychologically near makes people tend to construal the same object in terms of low level, detailed and contextualized features (low level construal). On the contrary, high level construal makes people percept the psychologically distant, and low level construal makes people percept the psychologically near. The paper also reviews the cause of bidirectional relationship between psychological distance and construal level. The reason why psychologically distant makes people tend to construal objects in terms of high level aspects is that people have less available and concrete information about the psychologically distant objects, or that the high level aspects would keep constant when the psychological distance become more and more distant, or that the planning habit—when people make plan for the future, they will consider the goals first (high level construal), then the feasibility, for instance. The reason why high level construal makes people percept the psychologically distant is that high level construal is more general and abstract. Future researches should pay more attention to: (1) The relationship between construal level and the distance between two objects, which is not mentally represented as social distance from oneself, temporal distance from now, or spatial distance from here. (2) The psychophysics research of the relationship between psychological distance and construal level, such as the dynamic changes of construal level by the changes of psychological distance. (3) How different distances combine to affect construal level? (4) Is there the distinction of the bidirectional relationship between psychological distance and construal level?
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