Motivation and emotion/Book/2023/Construal level theory

Construal level theory:
What is construal level theory and how can it be applied?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

Overview

Example of CLT: The digital age has influenced how individuals communicate and their perceived psychological distance from another person. Due to the high take up and widely accessibility of mobile phones across all parts of society some people feel less distance between another person regardless of their geographic distance. CLT is useful to understand how the use of technology influences cognition and behaviour. For instance, initially a person geographically distanced and only communicating online with work colleagues, may be perceived by their colleagues as high-level construal (more abstract in terms of their relationship). Over time and with high use of digital devices, such as videos their colleagues may perceive them as low-level construal (more detailed in terms of how they understand their relationship) (Norman et al., 2016).

Construal Level Theory (CLT) posited by Trope and Liberman (2010) considers how individuals construct mental representations of concepts, such as the future, places, people, or hypothetical possibilities. Additionally, CLT considers how the construct of these concepts are perceived and interpreted from a distance perspective.

This chapter explores CLT and through illustrating CLT it demonstrates there are intersections with motivation and emotion concepts and theories. Three focus questions inform this chapter.

Key focus questions What are construal levels in CLT? What are psychological distances in CLT? How are these two ideas applied in psychology, research, and society?

Devopment and future of CLT

Genesis

CLT evolved to better understand how and why people imagine concepts outside of their present perception, such as thinking about the future (Trope & Liberman, 2010). In late 1990', the initial idea of construal levels was developed, including construal levels was applied to explaining the planning fallacy and time discounting in two separate publications, Trope and Liberman (1998) and Trope and Liberman (2000).

2000s to present

During the 2000's Nira and Liberman called their theory "Temporal Construal Theory", but viewed their framework as being more expansive. This led to the idea of psychological distances. Following Trope and Liberman publishing their ideas more widely, interest grew in the topic. Adler and Sarstedt (2021) reviewed current research trends and found further work could be published on this topic, such as organisational psychology, climate change, self-regulation, wellbeing, attitudes and language.

Future directions

There are some inconsistencies in regards to CLT. Maier et al. (2022) found in a meta-analysis by Soderberg et al. (2015) researchers tended to under estimate publication bias, furthermore, recent studies show signs of publication bias (mostly due to inflated effect sizes and low power). Given this, replicability could be questioned relating to theoretical components of CLT.

What are construal levels and their relevance?

Construals refers to the how people perceive information uniquely by the schemas and beliefs they form (Trope & Liberman, 2010).

In cognitive psychology, this can also be thought of as the interpretations of ideas. CLT distinguishes between two types of construals:

• A high-level constural gives an overall schema of a concept only thinking of the overall ideas in the concept. The higher level concept is considered superordinate, meaning there is no broader way to define the idea.
• A low-level construal is the opposite, which focuses on the schema of a concept in a detailed and context specific way (Trope & Liberman, 2010), which can be considered subordinate i.e., lower in place.

Figure 1. The left image is a Water Lily. The right image is a Peace Lily. Case study:. Figure 1 shows two plants to illustrate the concept of high and low construals. The Water Lily and Peace Lily belong to different plant families. John, who is a botanist with years of experience, would likely categorise these from each other by their characteristics. However, Peter, who is new to gardening, would likely describe them as flowers or plants. John categorising the flowers by their plant family is an example of a low-level construal approach. Whereas, describing them as a plant or flower like Peter did, is an example of a high-level construal approach.

Relevance of construal levels: Thinking about objects in levels of detail and specificity is something people do all the time. It is a mental way to group and separate what people learn and experience, such as scientific classification and categorised concepts in any level of hierarchical order or specificity.

Table 1

Examples of everyday use of construal levels.

Low-level construal	High-level construal
How do I achieve this goal?	I want to achieve this goal
I argued with him/her about A and he/she said B about me which upset me, and I said C to him/her in response ...	He/she put me in a bad mood
Japanese cherry blossoms bloom pink or white flowers between March and April and can be seen along the Meguro river in Tokyo	Japanese cherry blossoms are flowers on a tree
Plays the piano	Musically capable
Psychology student, mathematics student, humanities student, etc.	Student
The iphone is a kind of mobile phone capable of using computer level functionality compared to a blackberry	A mobile phone is a telephone, a kind of telecommunications device

Psychological distance

The second idea of CLT is psychological distance, which refers to subjective distance an individual may feel between the present self and a concept (Trope & Liberman, 2010).

Four types of psychological distances individuals might perceive as not in their present reality, include: spatial, temporal, social, and hypothetical (Trope & Liberman, 2010).

According to CLT, when an individual constructs a mental representation of a concept using a psychological distance in that construction, the larger the subjective distance from the self, the mental representation becomes a high-level construal, while if the subjective distance is shorter, the mental representation becomes a low-level construal (Fiedler et al., 2012). Trope and Liberman (2010) posited CLT followed a non-linear curve. That is, CLT changes as abstraction grows in distance, but eventually becomes insignificant because a concept becomes abstract enough where delineating differences becomes difficult (see Weber-Fechner law).

Spatial and temporal

According to Trope and Liberman (2010):

• spatial distance refers to the physical distance between the self and a mental concept like news that occurs in on the other side of the world appears distant; and
• temporal distance refers to distance in time like often childhood memories appear quite abstract.

Example: With the influx of reports of sexual harassment since the #MeToo movement, Lucarini et al. (2020) examined whether the duration of time (short or long) of when a woman reports an incident of harassment affects another person’s reaction towards that incident. The researchers found study participants tended to victim blame rather than blame the alleged perpetrator. Furthermore, an individual’s perception of a negative incident in the temporal distance can result in people being less certain why it occurred (more abstract and high-level construal).

Social

Social distance refers to the distance or relationship between an individual and another person.

Case Study: In 2019, the Coronavirus pandemic forced society into lockdown and social distance. This had a big impact on Susan who lived alone in a small apartment and the emotion she experienced. Susan felt some of her relationships with friends were becoming disconnected or abstract (high-level construal). Susan recognised this and focused on keeping connected. Bowen (2021) found social closeness occurs when individuals communicate via digital media if they focus on the "big picture" value of their relationships (i.e. being a life partner or enduring friend because they associate this with relationship maintenance).

Figure 2. Public lectures are a form of social distance between the speaker and the audience.

One perspective of social distance is when referring to the self in third-person ("she" or "they"), as it creates more social distance than referring to the self in first-persons like "I" because the third-person implies an actor observer effect (Trope & Liberman, 2010).

Pronin and Ross (2006) explored attributing situational versus personality traits to someone else about their present or distant self in the past or future. They found when thinking about oneself in the past or future, an individual attributes personality traits to oneself as if they were someone else generalising them, rather than being more situation-specific. Some limitations however are the lack of cross-cultural sampling, and traits can highly variable in comparing effects across studies

Politeness

Politeness comes in many forms, such as respecting distance at a public lecture (see Figure 2) or responding to remarks, which should not directly impose (see imperative), rather allow the choice of the listener to respond. Stephen et al. (2010), building on previous studies, interprets this behavior as communicating social distance. Stephen et al. (2010) tested if politeness increased as psychological distance increased. They found phrases were more polite when using future or past tense. Alternatively, participants were motivated to adjust their physical proximity depending on the level of politeness in a message they were asked to communicate to other participants.

Hypothetical

Lastly, hypothetical distances refer to probability. The reasoning for defining hypothetical distances is that imagining ideas outside of reality involves imagining possibilities that may or may not exist. A closer hypothetical distance means something is more likely to happen. Whereas, a higher hypothetical distance can mean perceiving something as unlikely to happen.

Wakslak et al. (2006) undertook a number of experiments, each presented a scenario with a probable outcome which was manipulated. Participants were asked to either do something or conceptualise doing it. For example, in one experiment, the scenario consisted of participants reading a detailed flyer about a research assistant position. Participants were randomly allocated into a group believing whether the chance was low or high of getting the position. Participants in the high probability group were more motivated to recall the specific information than the low probability group, which were more likely to recall the general purpose of the flyer.

Hypothetical distance notoriously has had larger problems than other psychological distances in replicability. Calderon et al. (2020) in particular failed to replicate Wakslak et al. (2006) and cites several examples where subjective likelihoods show poor experimental manipulation with CLT.

Example: Luxury brands like Chanel Couture can be viewed as hypothetical distance due to their exclusive nature and not attainable for many (Choi et al., 2020).

Test your knowledge on psychology distance

Some blood types in the world are rarer than others and exist in a minority of people in different locations. What kind of psychological distances apply here?

	hypothetical, spatial
	temporal, spatial
	social, hypothetical
	Novelty

Applications of construals and CLT

Consumer and organisational psychology

Figure 3. The smell of perfume narrows distance between the person and the essence of the product.

Some novel research is being done in CLT and sensory experience. For example, research on olfactory products, such as perfume (see Figure 3) have an approach or avoidance function, which can characterise the object and its proximity. Ruzeviciute et al. (2020) found this proximity influences an individual's purchase desirability when it also is congruent with their expectation for the product.

In organisational psychology, there are a number of possibilities CLT could be applied to in a review by Wisenfeld et al. (2017). One is self-affirmation, which refers to one's desire to feel competent. CLT may apply in the case of stereotype threat by construing the self in a global manner to protect the self. For example, high-level construal can change how moral and fairness situations are perceived in an organisation because they are broad principles. Also, negotiation may take a high-level construal approach to group organisational issues because often it can be effective to group issues into one theme.

Emotion and regulation

'Metamotivation' is the idea that people can shift and regulate their motivational state to achieve a desirable goal by considering the contextual need as well as the cost-benefit of doing so (Fujita et al., 2020). An example of this is emotional regulation. Previous research highlights that using unpleasant emotions can help achieve an intended outcome. For example, expressing anger towards another person (taking context into consideration) can achieve the outcome because conflict is addressed (Ford & Tamil, 2012).

Schwartz et al. (2018) in their study examined how high and low-level construal influence decision making. Across three studies, the researchers randomly assigned participants into a high or low level construal groups and measured their responses hypothetical goal task. They found differences in the two groups in how participants responded. When presented with disputes where anger may or may not have been appropriate, the high-level construal group were more likely to be motivated to express anger. Whereas, the low-construal group were not influenced by this. The researchers claim this occurred because when participants use a high-level construal level, they could be considering the overall goal, making it clearer, resulting in participants using emotional regulation strategies. However, it could also be different emotions change the perception of an event.

Mayiwar and Bjorklund (2023) have also applied CLT to distinguish fear and anxiety as emotions, hypothesising anxiety as a high-level construal while fear is a low-level construal. The hypothesis is partly based on regulatory scope theory by Trope et al. (2021), which suggests emotions expand or contract the scope of an event.

Fear is a low-level construal emotion because it tends to activate in specific and clearly identified dangers (e.g. physical vulnerability), while anxiety is a general uncertain tension towards future events (Mayiwar & Bjorklund, 2023). Mayiwar and Bjorklund's study measured and compared descriptive responses to a autobiographical recall of a fear or anxiety related event. Abstractness was measured using a likert scale and a concreteness dictionary to count the number of abstract or concrete based words. A significant difference was found between the two groups in the number of concrete and abstract words used, suggesting anxiety was interpreted in a more abstract manner than fear.

Neuroscience

Figure 4 The default mode network has been found to be associated with mind wandering, or daydreaming, the latter being a part of the name of this painting.

The Default Mode Network (DMN) is one area believed to play a role in CLT with previous studies finding high-construal activation in the medial prefrontal cortex, and low-level construal activation in the posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus of the brain (Trobe & Liberman, 2010; Stillman et al., 2017), these regions being central in the DMN. The DMN is well known for future forecasting, theory of mind, and mind wandering (see Figure 4) (Stillman et al., 2017). However, Gilead et al. (2014) highlight the DMN also activates in episodic memory and executive function, so the DMN is a complex interplay of both low and high-level construal. An interesting finding is high psychological distance seems to associate to frontal regions while posterior regions associate to low psychological distance, possibly implying a the brain has developed to delineate abstract to concrete functioning.

A different approach has been taken using network neuroscience, which attempts to quantify interactions between brain regions as a network of connections (Stillman et al., 2020). An important concept relating to this is segregation versus integration. Segregation is how many connections nodes share with each other, while integration is how far these connections spread. Stillman et al. (2020) tested this using the why-how task and a task where they had to imagine an activity across various temporal distances (for instance, tomorrow or two years). The results found low-construals were associated to focused close connections while high-level construals were associated to widespread connections.

Social psychology

Social distance has been explored in people's perception of social power by suggesting low-power and high-power groups create social distance. This is due to an imbalance in their dependence and attitudes on interacting with each other for mutual benefit, i.e. high-power groups need little dependence on low-power groups and are cautious when needed, while low-power groups are more motivated to affiliate to build social rapport (Magee & Smith, 2013).

Magee and Smith (2013) highlight a few effects from this, including high-power individuals become less empathetic or responsive towards low-status groups because they view them dissimilar and not worth understanding or emotionally engaging with them. The award winning HBO-series Succession explores some of these aspects of social power within the fictional Roy family, some critics say the Roys are inspired by the Murdoch family.

Some other recent research has looked at psychological distance influencing legitimisation of inequality among social groups (see system justification theory). Previous studies find high psychological distance tend to lead to adopting broad attitudes and values that motivate following the status quo and engaging in collective behaviour, due to the manner in which high-level construals generalise an issue to a collective level. However, it can be positive and negative depending on whether it creates prejudice (Scarci, 2023).

Scarci's study examined if:

• low psychological distance led participants to take an egocentric attitude about their status or ideology leading to differences in system justification.
• high psychological distance reduces differences in individual issues for maintaining the status quo, leading social justification to be similar. This was done by first controlling for different inequality groups, then seeing if psychological distance moderated this. The results found that privileged groups were more likely to justify their social status under low psychological distance, but high psychological distance found no difference between groups in system justification (Scarci, 2023).

Reflection question

Some research has argued climate change engagement is low because many believe the noticeable effects of climate change are far in the future. Researchers believe emphasising the current effects of climate change should motivate engagement but the research has been mixed.

What way do you think decreasing psychological distance could benefit climate change messaging?

Conclusion

This chapter explored CLT, in particular, construal levels, psychological distances and application of CLT and subsequently found there are intersection with motivation and emotion concepts and theories. The chapter outlines construal levels are formed as a way to group concepts, noting these levels are not static. CLT connects construal levels to psychological distance which were explored. CLT is a broad theory that can be applied across different fields, such as consumer marketing, neuroscience and social theories. Finally, CLT is interesting in how it recontextualises how individuals think and react beyond immediate experiences; and how it can be used to shift perspectives.

See also

• Construal (Wikipedia)
• Fundamental attribution error (Book chapter, 2020)
• Action identification theory (Book chapter, 2020)
• Schema (Wikipedia)
• Emotional intelligence (Book chapter, 2022)
• Self-regulation (Book chapter, 2021)

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External links

• A brief introduction to construal level theory (Ohio State University)
• Music and construal level theory (Scientific American)
• construal level theory (Simon Moss)