Response Category Width as a Psychophysical Manifestation of Construal Level and Distance

Abstract

The present research suggests that people adjust their mental response scales to an object's distance and construal level. People make use of wider response categories when they judge distant and abstract as compared with close and concrete stimuli. Across five experiments, participants worked on visual and verbal estimation problems (e.g., length or quantity judgments). Answers were provided in interval format, and differences between minimal and maximal estimates served as a measure of response category width. When target objects were framed as spatially distant rather than close (Studies 1 and 3), as unlikely rather than likely (Study 2), and as abstract rather than concrete (Study 4), category widths increased. Similarly, priming a high-level rather than a low-level mindset yielded wider interval estimates (Study 5). The general discussion highlights the usefulness of category width as a basic measure of construal level and as a theoretical link between various branches of construal-level theory.

Toward a deeper understanding of the ecological origins of distance construal

“…However, interestingly, high objectivity indices were obtained for all four distances, when only the six highpower items were included in the analyses: .671, .779, .715, and .820 for temporal, probability, spatial, and personal distance, respectively. Given the egocentric definition of psychological distance in CLT, it appears indeed plausible that discrimination is easier on the more distant (i.e., high-power) side of the scale (Krüger, Fiedler, Koch, & Alves, 2013;Maglio et al, 2013). Consistent with this notion, an ordinal increase in objectivity was obtained for all 2 × 4 distance aspects when only negative verbs (i.e., more distant episodes) were included.…”

Climate Change From a Distance: An Analysis of Construal Level and Psychological Distance From Climate Change

“…Theoretically, abstract perceptions should be broad and have a wide confidence interval, whereas concrete perceptions should be more specific and have a narrower confidence interval. Krüger et al (2014) argue that “response category width” (RCW) is one way of measuring construal level of psychological distance–the more concretely an object is perceived, the narrower the range ought to be (Krüger et al, 2014).…”

“…Our goal was to establish the degree of correspondence between these two scales, and to determine which better predicts engagement with climate change. We also compared two scales measuring construal level, a commonly used measure called the Behavioral Identification Form (BIF), based on work by Vallacher and Wegner (1989), and a more quantitative method proposed by Krüger et al (2014), based on Pettigrew’s Category Width measure (1958).…”

The highest form of intelligence: Sarcasm increases creativity for both expressers and recipients

“…Empirically, decades of work have shown that both abstract thinking and creativity are consistently linked to right-hemispheric activation in the brain (e.g., Fink et al, 1996;Mihov, Denzler, & Förster, 2010). More importantly, abstract thinking also mediates the effect of various forms of psychological distance on creativity (e.g., Henderson & Wakslak, 2010;Jia, Hirt, & Karpen, 2009;Krüger, Fiedler, Koch, & Alves, 2013;Liberman, Polack, Hameiri, & Blumenfeld, 2012). Theoretically, abstract thinking can increase creativity in two ways.…”