Adjusting for Publication Bias Reveals That Evidence for and Size of Construal Level Theory Effects is Substantially Overestimated

Maier, Maximilian; Bartoš, František; Oh, Megan; Wagenmakers, Eric‐Jan; Shanks, David R.; Harris, Adam John Linton

doi:10.31234/osf.io/r8nyu

Cited by 16 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Our results and conclusions are in close agreement with recent meta-analytic studies which have shown that after accounting for publication bias, the evidence in favor of CLT is rather weak (Maier et al, 2022). They also align with the recent call for a multi-lab replication project aimed at replicating key experimental findings underlying CLT (https://climr.org/).…”

Section: Clt and Risky Decision-makingsupporting

confidence: 92%

Risk, Time, and Psychological Distance: Does Construal Level Theory Capture the Impact of Delay on Risk Preference?

Konstantinidis¹,

Newell²

2023

Preprint

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Do people change their preferences when they are offered the same risky lottery at different times (now vs the future)? Construal Level Theory (CLT) suggests that people do because our mental representation of events is moderated by how near or distant such events are in time. According to CLT, in the domain of risk preferences, psychological distance causes payoffs and probabilities to be differentially weighted or attended between present and future time points: high probability/low amount lotteries (i.e., %-lotteries) are preferred in the present, whereas low probability/high amount lotteries (i.e., $-lotteries) are preferred in the future, even when the Expected Value of these lotteries is identical. We present a systematic investigation of this putative asymmetric pattern of risk preferences and develop a formal model that incorporates CLT's predictions. In 5 experiments we examined several factors that could moderate the effect (e.g., outcome and probability magnitude, lottery presentation format, incentivization procedures). Both our behavioral observations and modeling results suggest the effect is labile, and if it does occur it is not fully consistent with our formal model of CLT.

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Section: Clt and Risky Decision-makingsupporting

confidence: 92%

Risk, Time, and Psychological Distance: Does Construal Level Theory Capture the Impact of Delay on Risk Preference?

Konstantinidis¹,

Newell²

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Relatedly, it is also possible, despite this being one of CLTs fundamental assumptions, that construal levels do not influence levels of abstraction. Maier et al (2022) used novel bias correction methods to reanalyze the data underlying the largest meta-analysis on CLT (Soderberg et al, 2014). Using a robust Bayesian meta-analysis (Maier et al, 2020), they found evidence against an effect of construal level on abstraction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic concreteness of statements of true and false intentions.

Calderon¹,

Giolla²,

Luke³

et al. 2023

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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Our aim was to examine how people communicate their true and false intentions. Based on construal-level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010), we predicted that statements of true intentions would be more concretely phrased than statements of false intentions. True intentions refer to more likely future events than false intentions, and they should therefore be mentally represented at a lower level of mental construal. This should be mirrored in more concrete language use. Transcripts of truthful and deceptive statements about intentions from six previous experimental studies (total N = 528) were analyzed using two automated verbal content analysis approaches: a folk-conceptual measure of concreteness (Brysbaert et al., 2014) and linguistic category model scoring (Seih et al., 2017). Contrary to our hypotheses, veracity did not predict statements' concreteness scores, suggesting that automated verbal analysis of linguistic concreteness is not a viable deception detection technique for intentions.

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“…Furthermore, the evidence for Construal Level Theory, which underpins the concept of psychological distance, has been found to suffer from publication bias and inconsistent effects (Keller et al, 2022;Maier et al, 2022).…”

Section: Location Of Climate Change Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Psychological Distance to Place Affinity: How People Perceive and React to the Location of Climate Change Impacts

Keller¹,

Richardson²,

Ball³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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As climate impacts become more visible, an increasing number of people experience or hear about distressing events such as flooding, landscape change and biodiversity loss. Most of these reports refer to specific places. It is therefore likely that people’s relationships with these places influence their perception of the climate crisis overall. In this paper, we draw together various strands of climate psychology to introduce a framework that addresses people’s perceptions of impacted places and the effect of these perceptions on considerations relating to risks. We propose that there are certain place beliefs (e.g., those related to distance, identity, similarity and caring) which make up our place affinity, which in turn influences our reaction to the place under threat. Additionally, we suggest there may be personal characteristics, termed susceptibility variables (e.g., empathy, values and thinking styles), which could shape these beliefs and their effect on risk perceptions. We report a mixed-method study that explores this framework in a sample of UK participants (N = 200). Participants expressed mixed feelings of familiarity, similarity and caring towards places impacted by climate change now or in the immediate future. Those with a higher affinity for an affected place were more likely to indicate higher concern, but not worry, about climate change overall. Participants expected to feel higher affinity for places impacted in the distant future; however, this was not associated with concern or worry. Qualitative data suggested that additional place beliefs may be related to climate justice, specifically the extent to which a place is thought be vulnerable or responsible for contributing to climate change. We conclude by discussing how our framework may facilitate effective messaging relating to climate change. We also highlight the need to conduct further exploratory and confirmatory work to identify and understand people’s complex beliefs and reactions to personally meaningful places that are under threat.

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Adjusting for Publication Bias Reveals That Evidence for and Size of Construal Level Theory Effects is Substantially Overestimated

Cited by 16 publications

References 60 publications

Risk, Time, and Psychological Distance: Does Construal Level Theory Capture the Impact of Delay on Risk Preference?

Risk, Time, and Psychological Distance: Does Construal Level Theory Capture the Impact of Delay on Risk Preference?

Linguistic concreteness of statements of true and false intentions.

From Psychological Distance to Place Affinity: How People Perceive and React to the Location of Climate Change Impacts

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