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Title
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Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
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Author
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Ledgerwood, Alison
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Trope, Yaacov
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Liberman, Nira
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Research Area
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Cognition and Emotions
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Topic
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Cognitive Plasticity
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Abstract
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Humans spend a large portion of their lives in pursuit of desired ends, from finding food and meeting deadlines to pursuing important career and relationship goals. The desired ends that people seek can vary in their proximity: For instance, food may be spatially close or distant; we might plan to meet a friend in the near or distant future. Thus, the ability to mentally support the pursuit of desired ends that are distant as well as close is essential for adaptive human functioning. This essay examines the basic mental processes that allow humans to contract and expand their regulatory scope in this functional way. A growing body of research suggests that different levels of psychological supports enable people to effectively pursue ends that can be closer or more distant. High‐level supports emphasize central and general aspects of an experience, and therefore tend to travel well—they can effectively guide action and interaction for the distant future, for remote locations, for unlikely scenarios, or with dissimilar others. Lower‐level supports emphasize specific, secondary, and unique aspects of an experience, and therefore support contractive scope—they help immerse people in the particular details of the current context to act effectively in the here and now. As the field moves forward, researchers are beginning to investigate how people expand and contract the scope of their social relationships in particular—an area of inquiry with important implications for understanding domains such as social communication and social learning that are central to human experience as social creatures.
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Identifier
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etrds0052
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extracted text
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Construal Level Theory and
Regulatory Scope
ALISON LEDGERWOOD, YAACOV TROPE, and NIRA LIBERMAN
Abstract
Humans spend a large portion of their lives in pursuit of desired ends, from finding
food and meeting deadlines to pursuing important career and relationship goals.
The desired ends that people seek can vary in their proximity: For instance, food
may be spatially close or distant; we might plan to meet a friend in the near or
distant future. Thus, the ability to mentally support the pursuit of desired ends that
are distant as well as close is essential for adaptive human functioning. This essay
examines the basic mental processes that allow humans to contract and expand
their regulatory scope in this functional way. A growing body of research suggests
that different levels of psychological supports enable people to effectively pursue
ends that can be closer or more distant. High-level supports emphasize central
and general aspects of an experience, and therefore tend to travel well—they can
effectively guide action and interaction for the distant future, for remote locations,
for unlikely scenarios, or with dissimilar others. Lower-level supports emphasize
specific, secondary, and unique aspects of an experience, and therefore support
contractive scope—they help immerse people in the particular details of the current
context to act effectively in the here and now. As the field moves forward, researchers
are beginning to investigate how people expand and contract the scope of their
social relationships in particular—an area of inquiry with important implications
for understanding domains such as social communication and social learning that
are central to human experience as social creatures.
INTRODUCTION
Humans spend much of their lives pursuing desired ends. Whether we are
trying to find a snack, find true love, send an e-mail, learn a new skill, ace
a test, get in shape, or vote for the next President, our minds are constantly
working to help us set goals, make plans, and take action to achieve our goals.
This process of regulating our thinking and behavior in ways that help us to
reach our goals is called self-regulation.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Moreover, the ends that we seek can vary in their proximity. Food may be
spatially close or distant; we might plan to meet someone in the near or distant future; a conversation partner might be someone socially close to us (e.g.,
a member of our own social group) or someone who is more socially distant
(a member of a different group); and we might prepare for a near certainty
or for a distant chance. The term regulatory scope refers to the extent to which
a person regulates herself toward psychologically close or psychologically
distant ends.
Being able to modulate regulatory scope—that is, being able to mentally
support the pursuit of desired ends that are distant as well as close—is essential for adaptive human functioning. On the one hand, humans need to be
able to immerse themselves in the here and now, contracting their regulatory
scope to adapt to the demands of the immediate situation and to respond
with context-appropriate behavior. Yet people also frequently need to move
beyond current experience to plan for the future, coordinate action at a distance, communicate with dissimilar others, and contemplate possible alternatives to their present reality. The key goal of the research described in this
essay is to understand the mental processes that allow humans to contract
and expand their regulatory scope in this functional way.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH: LEVELS OF MENTAL REPRESENTATION
Foundational research in this topic area has established that mental
representation—the way we think of or imagine something—plays a key
role in enabling humans to contract and expand their regulatory scope.
According to Construal Level Theory (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope &
Liberman, 2010), the same object or event can be mentally represented (or
construed) in more or less abstract ways. In other words, mental representations can be arranged along a vertical continuum of levels of abstraction,
from low to high. Higher-level construals are relatively abstract and structured: They extract the central information about an object or event and leave
out specific and peripheral details. In contrast, lower-level construals are
more concrete; they represent an object in terms of its detailed, subordinate,
and contextualized features, and tend to lack a clear structure separating
important from peripheral and irrelevant features. For example, the same
pair of sandals can be mentally represented as blue rubber flip-flops with a
scuff on the toe (a very low-level, concrete, and detailed representation) or
as footwear (a more high-level, abstract representation).
Considerable evidence supports the idea that these different levels of mental representation enable contractive and expansive thinking (see Trope &
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
3
Liberman, 2010, for a review). Higher-level construals are especially useful
for thinking about psychologically distant objects because high-level construals are more likely than low-level construals to remain unchanged as one
gets closer to an object or farther away from it. For example, when we shift
from representing an object as “a pair of flip-flops” to “footwear,” the latter,
more abstract mental representation is less likely to change across distance.
Whereas the concrete construal of flip-flops may be relevant only when planning a vacation for this coming June but not next winter, the higher-level construal of footwear can remain unchanged across temporal distance. Likewise,
more people wear footwear than flip-flops, and therefore the higher-level
construal is more useful for communicating with socially distant individuals
who may or may not wear flip-flops, but who probably wear footwear.
CONSTRUAL LEVELS MODULATE SCOPE
Thus, higher-level mental representations can support people’s ability to
think about (and regulate toward) psychologically distant ends. Consistent
with this notion, research suggests that low-level construals focus people
on what is psychologically proximal, whereas higher-level construals orient
people toward what is psychologically remote. For instance, in one study,
participants were led to construe a series of actions (e.g., Laura is buying a
computer) either in terms of their high-level, superordinate characteristics
(e.g., why Laura would buy the computer) or in terms of their low-level, subordinate characteristics (e.g., how she would buy the computer; Liberman,
Trope, McCrea, & Sherman, 2007, Study 1). Participants were then asked to
estimate when the person would perform the action. The researchers found
that participants who had been led to adopt low-level representations of the
actions estimated that the actions would be performed relatively soon, in the
near future, whereas participants who had been led to adopt higher-level
representations expected the actions to occur in the more distant future.
In other words, higher-level construals appeared to orient people to the
more distant future. Indeed, other research has shown that regardless of the
particular dimension of psychological distance (temporal, social, spatial,
etc.), abstraction in mental representation seems to allow mental horizons
to expand outward, away from immediate experience (e.g., Liberman &
Förster, 2009; Stephan, Liberman, & Trope, 2011; Wakslak & Trope, 2009).
SCOPE INFLUENCES LEVEL OF CONSTRUAL
Moreover, depending on whether people need to contract their mental
horizons to think about psychologically proximal objects, or expand their
mental horizons to think about psychologically distant objects, they tend
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
to use different levels of mental representation. For example, people tend
to adopt more abstract, high-level construals when planning for the more
distant future (Liberman, Sagristano, & Trope, 2002). Likewise, when people
need to think about spatially distant or socially distant others, they tend
to mentally represent those psychologically distant others more in terms
of their high-level, general dispositions (e.g., she is smart; he is mean), and
less in terms of low-level, concrete behaviors and circumstances (e.g., she
answered the question correctly; he got into an argument with his roommate;
Jones & Nisbett, 1971; Rim, Uleman, & Trope, 2009).
SUMMARY
Taken together, considerable evidence converges on the notion that levels
of mental representation help people modulate the scope of their thinking:
Whereas low-level construals guide people to think about what is psychologically proximal, high-level construals help people consider what is
psychologically remote. Moreover, when people need to think contractively
or expansively, research suggests that they tend to naturally adopt low- or
high-level construals, respectively.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
BEYOND MENTAL REPRESENTATION: APPLYING THE PRINCIPLE OF LEVEL MORE BROADLY
In order to self-regulate effectively, people must not only be able to mentally
represent the world around them—they must also be able to evaluate, want,
and act. In other words, self-regulation involves answering not only the question of “What is it?” but also the questions of “What do I want?” and “What do
I do?” Recent research suggests that the principle of level can be applied to a
wide range of psychological supports that humans have developed to guide
contractive and expansive action. High-level supports emphasize central and
general aspects of an experience, and therefore tend to “travel” well—they
can effectively guide action and interaction for the distant future, for remote
locations, for unlikely scenarios, or with dissimilar others. Lower-level supports emphasize specific, secondary, and unique aspects of an experience,
and therefore support contractive scope—they help immerse people in the
particular details of the current context to act effectively in the here and now.
EVALUATIONS
Consider the example of evaluations, which summarize the extent to which
an object or event is positive or negative (Do I like it?). Evaluations provide
efficient guides for action that help people determine whether to approach
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
5
or avoid a given object. Just as one can distinguish different levels of mental
representation that answer the question “What is it?” in different ways, so
too can one distinguish different levels of evaluation that answer the question “Do I want it?” or “Do I like it?” in different ways. Low-level evaluations that incorporate specific and incidental information help people contract their scope, immersing them in the details of the current context so that
they can easily adapt to the demands of the immediate situation. Higher-level
evaluations that incorporate more general, abstract information help people
transcend the particular details of their current situation to guide expansive
action toward more remote time points, places, possibilities, and people (see
Ledgerwood, Trope, & Liberman, 2010, for a review).
Consistent with this notion, research has shown that when people need to
contract their mental horizons to respond to a proximal issue (e.g., a political policy that will take effect next week, in the relatively near future), their
evaluations of the issue tend to incorporate specific and incidental social
influences, such as the opinion of an acquaintance or a briefly encountered
stranger (Ledgerwood, Trope, & Chaiken, 2010; Ledgerwood, Wakslak, &
Wang, 2010). In contrast, when people need to expand their mental horizons
to relate to a more distant issue (e.g., a political policy that will take effect next
year), their evaluations of the issue tend to reflect general social influences,
such as what most people in their group think about the issue (Ledgerwood
& Callahan, 2012).
General social influences provide just one source of broad, high-level information that can help guide expansive evaluations. Moral principles—abstract,
decontextualized information about what is typically right or wrong—can
provide another. Indeed, research has shown that people’s evaluations
are more likely to reflect their moral principles when they need to act on
psychologically distant (rather than near) objects or events. For instance,
one study asked participants to imagine a series of potentially offensive
moral transgressions (e.g., using a flag to clean the house) from either their
own perspective (low social distance) or from a third person perspective
(high social distance; Eyal, Liberman, & Trope, 2008). The results showed
that participants’ evaluations of the behaviors more strongly reflected their
own broad, moral principles when they made their judgments from a
psychologically distant perspective (the third person) rather than from a
psychologically proximal one (the first person). Similar patterns have been
found for high-level ideological principles and values, and across different
dimensions of psychological distance (see Ledgerwood et al., 2010, for a
review).
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
GOALS
The same basic principle of level can also be applied to goals. Goals are
hierarchically organized: Higher-level, superordinate goals tend to guide
and inform more specific subgoals. For example, jogging and weight lifting
are subordinate to the higher order goal of exercising, which in turn is
subordinate to the even higher order goal of staying healthy. Because
lower-level goals are specific and contextualized, they can help immerse
people in what is psychologically proximal. Because higher-level goals are
more abstract and general, they can extend to more distant situations. For
example, weight lifting might be planned for the relatively near future or for
nearby locations, whereas planning to exercise might take into consideration
more distant times and locations.
In general, low-level goals underlie short-term plans and help contract
regulatory scope, whereas higher-level goals underlie long-term plans
and help expand regulatory scope. For instance, research has shown that
although individuals usually show a strong preference for immediate over
delayed outcomes (a short-term focus that often hampers self-control), this
tendency is reduced when people focus on higher-level goals (e.g., being
healthy) rather than lower-level goals (e.g., lifting weights; Fujita, Trope,
Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006). In other research, participants tended to
focus on more superordinate goals when planning for an event in a spatially
distant rather than a spatially near location (Fujita, Henderson, Eng, Trope,
& Liberman, 2006), and when planning behavior for the more distant future
(Eyal, Sagristano, Trope, Liberman, & Chaiken, 2009). Likewise, people’s
behaviors tend to be more strongly guided by their high-level goal to either
look out for themselves (pro-self motivation) or to look out for others
(pro-social motivation) when they think about the more distant future (next
year) compared to the near future (next week; see Giacomantonio, De Dreu,
Shalvi, Sligte, & Leder, 2010).
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
NEW QUESTIONS: EXPANDING AND CONTRACTING THE SCOPE OF RELATIONSHIPS
As research on regulatory scope moves forward, one key new area of investigation involves the basic question of how people expand and contract the
scope of their social relationships. A common theme running through much
of social psychological research is that people tend to relate to others who
are psychologically close: People often compare their abilities, outcomes, and
opinions to similar rather than dissimilar others (Festinger, 1954), they prefer
their own group to other groups (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), they are more influenced by others who are close in space and time (Latané, 1981), and they are
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
7
more likely to form relationships with other people who are spatially close,
familiar, or similar to the self (Byrne, 1971; Zajonc, 1968).
The evidence for this human tendency to contract the scope of social
relationships, however, highlights the possibility—and importance—of a
less frequent alternative. Humans can, after all, sometimes transcend the
psychologically proximal and expand the scope of their social relations. They
may connect to people who are unlike themselves, who belong to group
other than their own, and who come from remote and foreign places.
The question of whether, and how, relational scope may vary has relevance
for countless domains central to human experience as social creatures. In
particular, we see current and future research focusing on three key areas
of social relations: social communication, social comparison, and social
exchange. In each case, research is beginning to ask: What determines
the scope of human relationships within this domain? For instance, what
determines whether people communicate with others who are removed
from them, or whether they confine their communication to close others?
What psychological processes lead people to expand or contract the range
of people to whom they compare themselves, or from whom they learn?
What determines people’s tendency to give and take with those who are
close by, or to expand these exchange relationships across the psychological
boundaries that separate people?
Researchers are also beginning to consider the corresponding question
of how relationships in these domains differ as a function of their scope.
For instance, new findings suggest that people communicate differently
with those who are close by or faraway: People prefer to use more concrete
representations (pictures) rather than abstract representations (words)
when communicating with other people who are closer in time, space, or
social distance (Amit, Wakslak, & Trope, 2013). We also expect that studies
will soon explore whether the basis of social comparison and learning shift
depending on how far away a target of comparison is, as well as what people
are willing to exchange with others who are near or distant. Such research
will be both theoretically important for understanding regulatory scope
and social functioning within each of these domains, as well as practically
important for understanding and improving social relationships, learning,
and social exchange.
CONCLUSION
In sum, theory and research suggest that the ability to modulate regulatory
scope is essential for adaptive functioning, and that humans rely on a range of
psychological supports to effectively pursue ends that can be closer or more
distant. These supports vary in level: Low-level supports include specific,
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
secondary, and unique aspects of an experience, and therefore help immerse
people in the here-and-now, whereas higher-level supports emphasize central and general aspects of an experience, and therefore help effectively guide
action for the there-and-then.
Importantly, the clear adaptive advantages of being able to flexibly contract
and expand one’s regulatory scope may have provided evolutionary pressure for the development of brain structures underlying these different levels
of thinking, wanting, and planning. This coevolution idea would be fruitfully
tested in future interdisciplinary research that integrates theory and methods
of brain, behavioral, and social sciences.
REFERENCES
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39(1), 43–56.
Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Eyal, T., Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2008). Judging near and distant virtue and vice.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1204–1209.
Eyal, T., Sagristano, M. D., Trope, Y., Liberman, N., & Chaiken, S. (2009). When values
matter: Expressing values in behavioral intentions for the near vs. distant future.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 35–43.
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7,
117–140.
Fujita, K., Henderson, M. D., Eng, J., Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2006). Spatial distance
and mental construal of social events. Psychological Science, 17(4), 278–282.
Fujita, K., Trope, Y., Liberman, N., & Levin-Sagi, M. (2006). Construal levels and
self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(3), 351.
Giacomantonio, M., De Dreu, C. K. W., Shalvi, S., Sligte, D. J., & Leder, S. (2010).
Psychological distance boosts value-behavior correspondence in ultimatum bargaining and integrative negotiation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46,
824–829.
Jones, E., & Nisbett, R. (1971). The Actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the
causes of behavior. New York, NY: General Learning Press.
Latané, B. (1981). The psychology of social impact. American Psychologist, 36, 343–356.
Ledgerwood, A., & Callahan, S. P. (2012). The social side of abstraction psychological
distance enhances conformity to group norms. Psychological Science, 23(8), 907–913.
Ledgerwood, A., Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Flexibility and consistency in evaluative responding: The function of construal level. In M. P. Zanna & J. M. Olson
(Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 43, pp. 257–295). San Diego,
CA: Academic Press.
Ledgerwood, A., Trope, Y., & Chaiken, S. (2010). Flexibility now, consistency later:
Psychological distance and construal shape evaluative responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 32–51.
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Ledgerwood, A., Wakslak, C. J., & Wang, M. A. (2010). Differential information
use for near and distant decisions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(4),
638–642.
Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2008). The psychology of transcending the here and now.
Science, 322, 1201–1205.
Liberman, N., & Förster, J. (2009). Distancing from experienced self: How
global-versus-local perception affects estimation of psychological distance. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(2), 203–216.
Liberman, N., Sagristano, M. D., & Trope, Y. (2002). The effect of temporal distance on level of mental construal. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38(6),
523–534.
Liberman, N., Trope, Y., McCrae, S., & Sherman, S. J. (2007). The effect of level of
construal on the temporal distance of activity enactment. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 43, 143–149.
Rim, S., Uleman, J. S., & Trope, Y. (2009). Spontaneous trait inference and construal
level theory: Psychological distance increases nonconscious trait thinking. Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(5), 1088–1097.
Stephan, E., Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2011). The effects of time perspective and
level of construal on social distance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47,
397–402.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of inter-group behavior.
In S. Worchel & L. W. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Chicago, IL:
Nelson-Hall.
Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance.
Psychological Review, 117(2), 440–463.
Wakslak, C. J., & Trope, Y. (2009). The effect of construal-level on subjective probability estimates. Psychological Science, 20, 52–58.
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology Monographs, 9, 1–27.
ALISON LEDGERWOOD SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Alison Ledgerwood is an assistant professor of psychology at the University
of California, Davis. She received her PhD in social psychology from New
York University in 2003. Her research interests center on the social psychological tools that humans have developed to help them reach across the distances
that separate self from other, now from future, here from there, and us from
them. Her empirical work has been published in outlets such as Psychological
Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Webpage: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Ledgerwood.
Curriculum Vitae: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/Ledgerwood/cv/
Ledgerwood%20CV.pdf
10
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
YAACOV TROPE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Yaacov Trope is a professor of Psychology at New York University since 1992.
He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1974 and then was
on the faculty of the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University. His major
areas of interest are social cognition, motivation, and self-regulation and he is
coeditor of several books, including Dual-Process Theories in Social Psychology (1999); Self-Control in Society, Mind, and Brain (2010), and Dual-Process
Theories of the Social Mind (2013).
Webpage: http://psych.nyu.edu/trope
NIRA LIBERMAN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Nira Liberman received her PhD in social psychology from Tel Aviv University in 1997. She held a postdoctoral position at Columbia University during
1996–1999, and an assistant professor position at Indiana University, Bloomington during 2000–2001. She has since been a professor at Tel Aviv University in the social psychology program. Her research interests include the
relations between psychological distance and mental representation, and the
effects of psychological distance on prediction, evaluation, and choice.
Webpage:
http://socsci.tau.ac.il/psy-eng/index.php/staff/faculty/29nira-liberman
RELATED ESSAYS
Epistemological Linguistics (Educ), Rebecca D. Greene and Kenji Hakuta
Multitasking (Communications & Media), Matthew Irwin and Zheng Wang
Neural and Cognitive Plasticity (Psychology), Eduardo Mercado III
-
Construal Level Theory and
Regulatory Scope
ALISON LEDGERWOOD, YAACOV TROPE, and NIRA LIBERMAN
Abstract
Humans spend a large portion of their lives in pursuit of desired ends, from finding
food and meeting deadlines to pursuing important career and relationship goals.
The desired ends that people seek can vary in their proximity: For instance, food
may be spatially close or distant; we might plan to meet a friend in the near or
distant future. Thus, the ability to mentally support the pursuit of desired ends that
are distant as well as close is essential for adaptive human functioning. This essay
examines the basic mental processes that allow humans to contract and expand
their regulatory scope in this functional way. A growing body of research suggests
that different levels of psychological supports enable people to effectively pursue
ends that can be closer or more distant. High-level supports emphasize central
and general aspects of an experience, and therefore tend to travel well—they can
effectively guide action and interaction for the distant future, for remote locations,
for unlikely scenarios, or with dissimilar others. Lower-level supports emphasize
specific, secondary, and unique aspects of an experience, and therefore support
contractive scope—they help immerse people in the particular details of the current
context to act effectively in the here and now. As the field moves forward, researchers
are beginning to investigate how people expand and contract the scope of their
social relationships in particular—an area of inquiry with important implications
for understanding domains such as social communication and social learning that
are central to human experience as social creatures.
INTRODUCTION
Humans spend much of their lives pursuing desired ends. Whether we are
trying to find a snack, find true love, send an e-mail, learn a new skill, ace
a test, get in shape, or vote for the next President, our minds are constantly
working to help us set goals, make plans, and take action to achieve our goals.
This process of regulating our thinking and behavior in ways that help us to
reach our goals is called self-regulation.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Moreover, the ends that we seek can vary in their proximity. Food may be
spatially close or distant; we might plan to meet someone in the near or distant future; a conversation partner might be someone socially close to us (e.g.,
a member of our own social group) or someone who is more socially distant
(a member of a different group); and we might prepare for a near certainty
or for a distant chance. The term regulatory scope refers to the extent to which
a person regulates herself toward psychologically close or psychologically
distant ends.
Being able to modulate regulatory scope—that is, being able to mentally
support the pursuit of desired ends that are distant as well as close—is essential for adaptive human functioning. On the one hand, humans need to be
able to immerse themselves in the here and now, contracting their regulatory
scope to adapt to the demands of the immediate situation and to respond
with context-appropriate behavior. Yet people also frequently need to move
beyond current experience to plan for the future, coordinate action at a distance, communicate with dissimilar others, and contemplate possible alternatives to their present reality. The key goal of the research described in this
essay is to understand the mental processes that allow humans to contract
and expand their regulatory scope in this functional way.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH: LEVELS OF MENTAL REPRESENTATION
Foundational research in this topic area has established that mental
representation—the way we think of or imagine something—plays a key
role in enabling humans to contract and expand their regulatory scope.
According to Construal Level Theory (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope &
Liberman, 2010), the same object or event can be mentally represented (or
construed) in more or less abstract ways. In other words, mental representations can be arranged along a vertical continuum of levels of abstraction,
from low to high. Higher-level construals are relatively abstract and structured: They extract the central information about an object or event and leave
out specific and peripheral details. In contrast, lower-level construals are
more concrete; they represent an object in terms of its detailed, subordinate,
and contextualized features, and tend to lack a clear structure separating
important from peripheral and irrelevant features. For example, the same
pair of sandals can be mentally represented as blue rubber flip-flops with a
scuff on the toe (a very low-level, concrete, and detailed representation) or
as footwear (a more high-level, abstract representation).
Considerable evidence supports the idea that these different levels of mental representation enable contractive and expansive thinking (see Trope &
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
3
Liberman, 2010, for a review). Higher-level construals are especially useful
for thinking about psychologically distant objects because high-level construals are more likely than low-level construals to remain unchanged as one
gets closer to an object or farther away from it. For example, when we shift
from representing an object as “a pair of flip-flops” to “footwear,” the latter,
more abstract mental representation is less likely to change across distance.
Whereas the concrete construal of flip-flops may be relevant only when planning a vacation for this coming June but not next winter, the higher-level construal of footwear can remain unchanged across temporal distance. Likewise,
more people wear footwear than flip-flops, and therefore the higher-level
construal is more useful for communicating with socially distant individuals
who may or may not wear flip-flops, but who probably wear footwear.
CONSTRUAL LEVELS MODULATE SCOPE
Thus, higher-level mental representations can support people’s ability to
think about (and regulate toward) psychologically distant ends. Consistent
with this notion, research suggests that low-level construals focus people
on what is psychologically proximal, whereas higher-level construals orient
people toward what is psychologically remote. For instance, in one study,
participants were led to construe a series of actions (e.g., Laura is buying a
computer) either in terms of their high-level, superordinate characteristics
(e.g., why Laura would buy the computer) or in terms of their low-level, subordinate characteristics (e.g., how she would buy the computer; Liberman,
Trope, McCrea, & Sherman, 2007, Study 1). Participants were then asked to
estimate when the person would perform the action. The researchers found
that participants who had been led to adopt low-level representations of the
actions estimated that the actions would be performed relatively soon, in the
near future, whereas participants who had been led to adopt higher-level
representations expected the actions to occur in the more distant future.
In other words, higher-level construals appeared to orient people to the
more distant future. Indeed, other research has shown that regardless of the
particular dimension of psychological distance (temporal, social, spatial,
etc.), abstraction in mental representation seems to allow mental horizons
to expand outward, away from immediate experience (e.g., Liberman &
Förster, 2009; Stephan, Liberman, & Trope, 2011; Wakslak & Trope, 2009).
SCOPE INFLUENCES LEVEL OF CONSTRUAL
Moreover, depending on whether people need to contract their mental
horizons to think about psychologically proximal objects, or expand their
mental horizons to think about psychologically distant objects, they tend
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
to use different levels of mental representation. For example, people tend
to adopt more abstract, high-level construals when planning for the more
distant future (Liberman, Sagristano, & Trope, 2002). Likewise, when people
need to think about spatially distant or socially distant others, they tend
to mentally represent those psychologically distant others more in terms
of their high-level, general dispositions (e.g., she is smart; he is mean), and
less in terms of low-level, concrete behaviors and circumstances (e.g., she
answered the question correctly; he got into an argument with his roommate;
Jones & Nisbett, 1971; Rim, Uleman, & Trope, 2009).
SUMMARY
Taken together, considerable evidence converges on the notion that levels
of mental representation help people modulate the scope of their thinking:
Whereas low-level construals guide people to think about what is psychologically proximal, high-level construals help people consider what is
psychologically remote. Moreover, when people need to think contractively
or expansively, research suggests that they tend to naturally adopt low- or
high-level construals, respectively.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
BEYOND MENTAL REPRESENTATION: APPLYING THE PRINCIPLE OF LEVEL MORE BROADLY
In order to self-regulate effectively, people must not only be able to mentally
represent the world around them—they must also be able to evaluate, want,
and act. In other words, self-regulation involves answering not only the question of “What is it?” but also the questions of “What do I want?” and “What do
I do?” Recent research suggests that the principle of level can be applied to a
wide range of psychological supports that humans have developed to guide
contractive and expansive action. High-level supports emphasize central and
general aspects of an experience, and therefore tend to “travel” well—they
can effectively guide action and interaction for the distant future, for remote
locations, for unlikely scenarios, or with dissimilar others. Lower-level supports emphasize specific, secondary, and unique aspects of an experience,
and therefore support contractive scope—they help immerse people in the
particular details of the current context to act effectively in the here and now.
EVALUATIONS
Consider the example of evaluations, which summarize the extent to which
an object or event is positive or negative (Do I like it?). Evaluations provide
efficient guides for action that help people determine whether to approach
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
5
or avoid a given object. Just as one can distinguish different levels of mental
representation that answer the question “What is it?” in different ways, so
too can one distinguish different levels of evaluation that answer the question “Do I want it?” or “Do I like it?” in different ways. Low-level evaluations that incorporate specific and incidental information help people contract their scope, immersing them in the details of the current context so that
they can easily adapt to the demands of the immediate situation. Higher-level
evaluations that incorporate more general, abstract information help people
transcend the particular details of their current situation to guide expansive
action toward more remote time points, places, possibilities, and people (see
Ledgerwood, Trope, & Liberman, 2010, for a review).
Consistent with this notion, research has shown that when people need to
contract their mental horizons to respond to a proximal issue (e.g., a political policy that will take effect next week, in the relatively near future), their
evaluations of the issue tend to incorporate specific and incidental social
influences, such as the opinion of an acquaintance or a briefly encountered
stranger (Ledgerwood, Trope, & Chaiken, 2010; Ledgerwood, Wakslak, &
Wang, 2010). In contrast, when people need to expand their mental horizons
to relate to a more distant issue (e.g., a political policy that will take effect next
year), their evaluations of the issue tend to reflect general social influences,
such as what most people in their group think about the issue (Ledgerwood
& Callahan, 2012).
General social influences provide just one source of broad, high-level information that can help guide expansive evaluations. Moral principles—abstract,
decontextualized information about what is typically right or wrong—can
provide another. Indeed, research has shown that people’s evaluations
are more likely to reflect their moral principles when they need to act on
psychologically distant (rather than near) objects or events. For instance,
one study asked participants to imagine a series of potentially offensive
moral transgressions (e.g., using a flag to clean the house) from either their
own perspective (low social distance) or from a third person perspective
(high social distance; Eyal, Liberman, & Trope, 2008). The results showed
that participants’ evaluations of the behaviors more strongly reflected their
own broad, moral principles when they made their judgments from a
psychologically distant perspective (the third person) rather than from a
psychologically proximal one (the first person). Similar patterns have been
found for high-level ideological principles and values, and across different
dimensions of psychological distance (see Ledgerwood et al., 2010, for a
review).
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
GOALS
The same basic principle of level can also be applied to goals. Goals are
hierarchically organized: Higher-level, superordinate goals tend to guide
and inform more specific subgoals. For example, jogging and weight lifting
are subordinate to the higher order goal of exercising, which in turn is
subordinate to the even higher order goal of staying healthy. Because
lower-level goals are specific and contextualized, they can help immerse
people in what is psychologically proximal. Because higher-level goals are
more abstract and general, they can extend to more distant situations. For
example, weight lifting might be planned for the relatively near future or for
nearby locations, whereas planning to exercise might take into consideration
more distant times and locations.
In general, low-level goals underlie short-term plans and help contract
regulatory scope, whereas higher-level goals underlie long-term plans
and help expand regulatory scope. For instance, research has shown that
although individuals usually show a strong preference for immediate over
delayed outcomes (a short-term focus that often hampers self-control), this
tendency is reduced when people focus on higher-level goals (e.g., being
healthy) rather than lower-level goals (e.g., lifting weights; Fujita, Trope,
Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006). In other research, participants tended to
focus on more superordinate goals when planning for an event in a spatially
distant rather than a spatially near location (Fujita, Henderson, Eng, Trope,
& Liberman, 2006), and when planning behavior for the more distant future
(Eyal, Sagristano, Trope, Liberman, & Chaiken, 2009). Likewise, people’s
behaviors tend to be more strongly guided by their high-level goal to either
look out for themselves (pro-self motivation) or to look out for others
(pro-social motivation) when they think about the more distant future (next
year) compared to the near future (next week; see Giacomantonio, De Dreu,
Shalvi, Sligte, & Leder, 2010).
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
NEW QUESTIONS: EXPANDING AND CONTRACTING THE SCOPE OF RELATIONSHIPS
As research on regulatory scope moves forward, one key new area of investigation involves the basic question of how people expand and contract the
scope of their social relationships. A common theme running through much
of social psychological research is that people tend to relate to others who
are psychologically close: People often compare their abilities, outcomes, and
opinions to similar rather than dissimilar others (Festinger, 1954), they prefer
their own group to other groups (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), they are more influenced by others who are close in space and time (Latané, 1981), and they are
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
7
more likely to form relationships with other people who are spatially close,
familiar, or similar to the self (Byrne, 1971; Zajonc, 1968).
The evidence for this human tendency to contract the scope of social
relationships, however, highlights the possibility—and importance—of a
less frequent alternative. Humans can, after all, sometimes transcend the
psychologically proximal and expand the scope of their social relations. They
may connect to people who are unlike themselves, who belong to group
other than their own, and who come from remote and foreign places.
The question of whether, and how, relational scope may vary has relevance
for countless domains central to human experience as social creatures. In
particular, we see current and future research focusing on three key areas
of social relations: social communication, social comparison, and social
exchange. In each case, research is beginning to ask: What determines
the scope of human relationships within this domain? For instance, what
determines whether people communicate with others who are removed
from them, or whether they confine their communication to close others?
What psychological processes lead people to expand or contract the range
of people to whom they compare themselves, or from whom they learn?
What determines people’s tendency to give and take with those who are
close by, or to expand these exchange relationships across the psychological
boundaries that separate people?
Researchers are also beginning to consider the corresponding question
of how relationships in these domains differ as a function of their scope.
For instance, new findings suggest that people communicate differently
with those who are close by or faraway: People prefer to use more concrete
representations (pictures) rather than abstract representations (words)
when communicating with other people who are closer in time, space, or
social distance (Amit, Wakslak, & Trope, 2013). We also expect that studies
will soon explore whether the basis of social comparison and learning shift
depending on how far away a target of comparison is, as well as what people
are willing to exchange with others who are near or distant. Such research
will be both theoretically important for understanding regulatory scope
and social functioning within each of these domains, as well as practically
important for understanding and improving social relationships, learning,
and social exchange.
CONCLUSION
In sum, theory and research suggest that the ability to modulate regulatory
scope is essential for adaptive functioning, and that humans rely on a range of
psychological supports to effectively pursue ends that can be closer or more
distant. These supports vary in level: Low-level supports include specific,
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
secondary, and unique aspects of an experience, and therefore help immerse
people in the here-and-now, whereas higher-level supports emphasize central and general aspects of an experience, and therefore help effectively guide
action for the there-and-then.
Importantly, the clear adaptive advantages of being able to flexibly contract
and expand one’s regulatory scope may have provided evolutionary pressure for the development of brain structures underlying these different levels
of thinking, wanting, and planning. This coevolution idea would be fruitfully
tested in future interdisciplinary research that integrates theory and methods
of brain, behavioral, and social sciences.
REFERENCES
Amit, E., Wakslak, C., & Trope, Y. (2013). The use of visual and verbal means of communication across psychological distance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
39(1), 43–56.
Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Eyal, T., Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2008). Judging near and distant virtue and vice.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1204–1209.
Eyal, T., Sagristano, M. D., Trope, Y., Liberman, N., & Chaiken, S. (2009). When values
matter: Expressing values in behavioral intentions for the near vs. distant future.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 35–43.
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7,
117–140.
Fujita, K., Henderson, M. D., Eng, J., Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2006). Spatial distance
and mental construal of social events. Psychological Science, 17(4), 278–282.
Fujita, K., Trope, Y., Liberman, N., & Levin-Sagi, M. (2006). Construal levels and
self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(3), 351.
Giacomantonio, M., De Dreu, C. K. W., Shalvi, S., Sligte, D. J., & Leder, S. (2010).
Psychological distance boosts value-behavior correspondence in ultimatum bargaining and integrative negotiation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46,
824–829.
Jones, E., & Nisbett, R. (1971). The Actor and the observer: Divergent perceptions of the
causes of behavior. New York, NY: General Learning Press.
Latané, B. (1981). The psychology of social impact. American Psychologist, 36, 343–356.
Ledgerwood, A., & Callahan, S. P. (2012). The social side of abstraction psychological
distance enhances conformity to group norms. Psychological Science, 23(8), 907–913.
Ledgerwood, A., Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Flexibility and consistency in evaluative responding: The function of construal level. In M. P. Zanna & J. M. Olson
(Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 43, pp. 257–295). San Diego,
CA: Academic Press.
Ledgerwood, A., Trope, Y., & Chaiken, S. (2010). Flexibility now, consistency later:
Psychological distance and construal shape evaluative responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 32–51.
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Ledgerwood, A., Wakslak, C. J., & Wang, M. A. (2010). Differential information
use for near and distant decisions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(4),
638–642.
Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2008). The psychology of transcending the here and now.
Science, 322, 1201–1205.
Liberman, N., & Förster, J. (2009). Distancing from experienced self: How
global-versus-local perception affects estimation of psychological distance. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(2), 203–216.
Liberman, N., Sagristano, M. D., & Trope, Y. (2002). The effect of temporal distance on level of mental construal. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38(6),
523–534.
Liberman, N., Trope, Y., McCrae, S., & Sherman, S. J. (2007). The effect of level of
construal on the temporal distance of activity enactment. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 43, 143–149.
Rim, S., Uleman, J. S., & Trope, Y. (2009). Spontaneous trait inference and construal
level theory: Psychological distance increases nonconscious trait thinking. Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(5), 1088–1097.
Stephan, E., Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2011). The effects of time perspective and
level of construal on social distance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47,
397–402.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of inter-group behavior.
In S. Worchel & L. W. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Chicago, IL:
Nelson-Hall.
Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance.
Psychological Review, 117(2), 440–463.
Wakslak, C. J., & Trope, Y. (2009). The effect of construal-level on subjective probability estimates. Psychological Science, 20, 52–58.
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology Monographs, 9, 1–27.
ALISON LEDGERWOOD SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Alison Ledgerwood is an assistant professor of psychology at the University
of California, Davis. She received her PhD in social psychology from New
York University in 2003. Her research interests center on the social psychological tools that humans have developed to help them reach across the distances
that separate self from other, now from future, here from there, and us from
them. Her empirical work has been published in outlets such as Psychological
Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Webpage: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Ledgerwood.
Curriculum Vitae: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/Ledgerwood/cv/
Ledgerwood%20CV.pdf
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
YAACOV TROPE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Yaacov Trope is a professor of Psychology at New York University since 1992.
He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1974 and then was
on the faculty of the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University. His major
areas of interest are social cognition, motivation, and self-regulation and he is
coeditor of several books, including Dual-Process Theories in Social Psychology (1999); Self-Control in Society, Mind, and Brain (2010), and Dual-Process
Theories of the Social Mind (2013).
Webpage: http://psych.nyu.edu/trope
NIRA LIBERMAN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Nira Liberman received her PhD in social psychology from Tel Aviv University in 1997. She held a postdoctoral position at Columbia University during
1996–1999, and an assistant professor position at Indiana University, Bloomington during 2000–2001. She has since been a professor at Tel Aviv University in the social psychology program. Her research interests include the
relations between psychological distance and mental representation, and the
effects of psychological distance on prediction, evaluation, and choice.
Webpage:
http://socsci.tau.ac.il/psy-eng/index.php/staff/faculty/29nira-liberman
RELATED ESSAYS
Epistemological Linguistics (Educ), Rebecca D. Greene and Kenji Hakuta
Multitasking (Communications & Media), Matthew Irwin and Zheng Wang
Neural and Cognitive Plasticity (Psychology), Eduardo Mercado III
Construal Level Theory and
Regulatory Scope
ALISON LEDGERWOOD, YAACOV TROPE, and NIRA LIBERMAN
Abstract
Humans spend a large portion of their lives in pursuit of desired ends, from finding
food and meeting deadlines to pursuing important career and relationship goals.
The desired ends that people seek can vary in their proximity: For instance, food
may be spatially close or distant; we might plan to meet a friend in the near or
distant future. Thus, the ability to mentally support the pursuit of desired ends that
are distant as well as close is essential for adaptive human functioning. This essay
examines the basic mental processes that allow humans to contract and expand
their regulatory scope in this functional way. A growing body of research suggests
that different levels of psychological supports enable people to effectively pursue
ends that can be closer or more distant. High-level supports emphasize central
and general aspects of an experience, and therefore tend to travel well—they can
effectively guide action and interaction for the distant future, for remote locations,
for unlikely scenarios, or with dissimilar others. Lower-level supports emphasize
specific, secondary, and unique aspects of an experience, and therefore support
contractive scope—they help immerse people in the particular details of the current
context to act effectively in the here and now. As the field moves forward, researchers
are beginning to investigate how people expand and contract the scope of their
social relationships in particular—an area of inquiry with important implications
for understanding domains such as social communication and social learning that
are central to human experience as social creatures.
INTRODUCTION
Humans spend much of their lives pursuing desired ends. Whether we are
trying to find a snack, find true love, send an e-mail, learn a new skill, ace
a test, get in shape, or vote for the next President, our minds are constantly
working to help us set goals, make plans, and take action to achieve our goals.
This process of regulating our thinking and behavior in ways that help us to
reach our goals is called self-regulation.
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
Moreover, the ends that we seek can vary in their proximity. Food may be
spatially close or distant; we might plan to meet someone in the near or distant future; a conversation partner might be someone socially close to us (e.g.,
a member of our own social group) or someone who is more socially distant
(a member of a different group); and we might prepare for a near certainty
or for a distant chance. The term regulatory scope refers to the extent to which
a person regulates herself toward psychologically close or psychologically
distant ends.
Being able to modulate regulatory scope—that is, being able to mentally
support the pursuit of desired ends that are distant as well as close—is essential for adaptive human functioning. On the one hand, humans need to be
able to immerse themselves in the here and now, contracting their regulatory
scope to adapt to the demands of the immediate situation and to respond
with context-appropriate behavior. Yet people also frequently need to move
beyond current experience to plan for the future, coordinate action at a distance, communicate with dissimilar others, and contemplate possible alternatives to their present reality. The key goal of the research described in this
essay is to understand the mental processes that allow humans to contract
and expand their regulatory scope in this functional way.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH: LEVELS OF MENTAL REPRESENTATION
Foundational research in this topic area has established that mental
representation—the way we think of or imagine something—plays a key
role in enabling humans to contract and expand their regulatory scope.
According to Construal Level Theory (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope &
Liberman, 2010), the same object or event can be mentally represented (or
construed) in more or less abstract ways. In other words, mental representations can be arranged along a vertical continuum of levels of abstraction,
from low to high. Higher-level construals are relatively abstract and structured: They extract the central information about an object or event and leave
out specific and peripheral details. In contrast, lower-level construals are
more concrete; they represent an object in terms of its detailed, subordinate,
and contextualized features, and tend to lack a clear structure separating
important from peripheral and irrelevant features. For example, the same
pair of sandals can be mentally represented as blue rubber flip-flops with a
scuff on the toe (a very low-level, concrete, and detailed representation) or
as footwear (a more high-level, abstract representation).
Considerable evidence supports the idea that these different levels of mental representation enable contractive and expansive thinking (see Trope &
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
3
Liberman, 2010, for a review). Higher-level construals are especially useful
for thinking about psychologically distant objects because high-level construals are more likely than low-level construals to remain unchanged as one
gets closer to an object or farther away from it. For example, when we shift
from representing an object as “a pair of flip-flops” to “footwear,” the latter,
more abstract mental representation is less likely to change across distance.
Whereas the concrete construal of flip-flops may be relevant only when planning a vacation for this coming June but not next winter, the higher-level construal of footwear can remain unchanged across temporal distance. Likewise,
more people wear footwear than flip-flops, and therefore the higher-level
construal is more useful for communicating with socially distant individuals
who may or may not wear flip-flops, but who probably wear footwear.
CONSTRUAL LEVELS MODULATE SCOPE
Thus, higher-level mental representations can support people’s ability to
think about (and regulate toward) psychologically distant ends. Consistent
with this notion, research suggests that low-level construals focus people
on what is psychologically proximal, whereas higher-level construals orient
people toward what is psychologically remote. For instance, in one study,
participants were led to construe a series of actions (e.g., Laura is buying a
computer) either in terms of their high-level, superordinate characteristics
(e.g., why Laura would buy the computer) or in terms of their low-level, subordinate characteristics (e.g., how she would buy the computer; Liberman,
Trope, McCrea, & Sherman, 2007, Study 1). Participants were then asked to
estimate when the person would perform the action. The researchers found
that participants who had been led to adopt low-level representations of the
actions estimated that the actions would be performed relatively soon, in the
near future, whereas participants who had been led to adopt higher-level
representations expected the actions to occur in the more distant future.
In other words, higher-level construals appeared to orient people to the
more distant future. Indeed, other research has shown that regardless of the
particular dimension of psychological distance (temporal, social, spatial,
etc.), abstraction in mental representation seems to allow mental horizons
to expand outward, away from immediate experience (e.g., Liberman &
Förster, 2009; Stephan, Liberman, & Trope, 2011; Wakslak & Trope, 2009).
SCOPE INFLUENCES LEVEL OF CONSTRUAL
Moreover, depending on whether people need to contract their mental
horizons to think about psychologically proximal objects, or expand their
mental horizons to think about psychologically distant objects, they tend
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
to use different levels of mental representation. For example, people tend
to adopt more abstract, high-level construals when planning for the more
distant future (Liberman, Sagristano, & Trope, 2002). Likewise, when people
need to think about spatially distant or socially distant others, they tend
to mentally represent those psychologically distant others more in terms
of their high-level, general dispositions (e.g., she is smart; he is mean), and
less in terms of low-level, concrete behaviors and circumstances (e.g., she
answered the question correctly; he got into an argument with his roommate;
Jones & Nisbett, 1971; Rim, Uleman, & Trope, 2009).
SUMMARY
Taken together, considerable evidence converges on the notion that levels
of mental representation help people modulate the scope of their thinking:
Whereas low-level construals guide people to think about what is psychologically proximal, high-level construals help people consider what is
psychologically remote. Moreover, when people need to think contractively
or expansively, research suggests that they tend to naturally adopt low- or
high-level construals, respectively.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
BEYOND MENTAL REPRESENTATION: APPLYING THE PRINCIPLE OF LEVEL MORE BROADLY
In order to self-regulate effectively, people must not only be able to mentally
represent the world around them—they must also be able to evaluate, want,
and act. In other words, self-regulation involves answering not only the question of “What is it?” but also the questions of “What do I want?” and “What do
I do?” Recent research suggests that the principle of level can be applied to a
wide range of psychological supports that humans have developed to guide
contractive and expansive action. High-level supports emphasize central and
general aspects of an experience, and therefore tend to “travel” well—they
can effectively guide action and interaction for the distant future, for remote
locations, for unlikely scenarios, or with dissimilar others. Lower-level supports emphasize specific, secondary, and unique aspects of an experience,
and therefore support contractive scope—they help immerse people in the
particular details of the current context to act effectively in the here and now.
EVALUATIONS
Consider the example of evaluations, which summarize the extent to which
an object or event is positive or negative (Do I like it?). Evaluations provide
efficient guides for action that help people determine whether to approach
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
5
or avoid a given object. Just as one can distinguish different levels of mental
representation that answer the question “What is it?” in different ways, so
too can one distinguish different levels of evaluation that answer the question “Do I want it?” or “Do I like it?” in different ways. Low-level evaluations that incorporate specific and incidental information help people contract their scope, immersing them in the details of the current context so that
they can easily adapt to the demands of the immediate situation. Higher-level
evaluations that incorporate more general, abstract information help people
transcend the particular details of their current situation to guide expansive
action toward more remote time points, places, possibilities, and people (see
Ledgerwood, Trope, & Liberman, 2010, for a review).
Consistent with this notion, research has shown that when people need to
contract their mental horizons to respond to a proximal issue (e.g., a political policy that will take effect next week, in the relatively near future), their
evaluations of the issue tend to incorporate specific and incidental social
influences, such as the opinion of an acquaintance or a briefly encountered
stranger (Ledgerwood, Trope, & Chaiken, 2010; Ledgerwood, Wakslak, &
Wang, 2010). In contrast, when people need to expand their mental horizons
to relate to a more distant issue (e.g., a political policy that will take effect next
year), their evaluations of the issue tend to reflect general social influences,
such as what most people in their group think about the issue (Ledgerwood
& Callahan, 2012).
General social influences provide just one source of broad, high-level information that can help guide expansive evaluations. Moral principles—abstract,
decontextualized information about what is typically right or wrong—can
provide another. Indeed, research has shown that people’s evaluations
are more likely to reflect their moral principles when they need to act on
psychologically distant (rather than near) objects or events. For instance,
one study asked participants to imagine a series of potentially offensive
moral transgressions (e.g., using a flag to clean the house) from either their
own perspective (low social distance) or from a third person perspective
(high social distance; Eyal, Liberman, & Trope, 2008). The results showed
that participants’ evaluations of the behaviors more strongly reflected their
own broad, moral principles when they made their judgments from a
psychologically distant perspective (the third person) rather than from a
psychologically proximal one (the first person). Similar patterns have been
found for high-level ideological principles and values, and across different
dimensions of psychological distance (see Ledgerwood et al., 2010, for a
review).
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
GOALS
The same basic principle of level can also be applied to goals. Goals are
hierarchically organized: Higher-level, superordinate goals tend to guide
and inform more specific subgoals. For example, jogging and weight lifting
are subordinate to the higher order goal of exercising, which in turn is
subordinate to the even higher order goal of staying healthy. Because
lower-level goals are specific and contextualized, they can help immerse
people in what is psychologically proximal. Because higher-level goals are
more abstract and general, they can extend to more distant situations. For
example, weight lifting might be planned for the relatively near future or for
nearby locations, whereas planning to exercise might take into consideration
more distant times and locations.
In general, low-level goals underlie short-term plans and help contract
regulatory scope, whereas higher-level goals underlie long-term plans
and help expand regulatory scope. For instance, research has shown that
although individuals usually show a strong preference for immediate over
delayed outcomes (a short-term focus that often hampers self-control), this
tendency is reduced when people focus on higher-level goals (e.g., being
healthy) rather than lower-level goals (e.g., lifting weights; Fujita, Trope,
Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006). In other research, participants tended to
focus on more superordinate goals when planning for an event in a spatially
distant rather than a spatially near location (Fujita, Henderson, Eng, Trope,
& Liberman, 2006), and when planning behavior for the more distant future
(Eyal, Sagristano, Trope, Liberman, & Chaiken, 2009). Likewise, people’s
behaviors tend to be more strongly guided by their high-level goal to either
look out for themselves (pro-self motivation) or to look out for others
(pro-social motivation) when they think about the more distant future (next
year) compared to the near future (next week; see Giacomantonio, De Dreu,
Shalvi, Sligte, & Leder, 2010).
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
NEW QUESTIONS: EXPANDING AND CONTRACTING THE SCOPE OF RELATIONSHIPS
As research on regulatory scope moves forward, one key new area of investigation involves the basic question of how people expand and contract the
scope of their social relationships. A common theme running through much
of social psychological research is that people tend to relate to others who
are psychologically close: People often compare their abilities, outcomes, and
opinions to similar rather than dissimilar others (Festinger, 1954), they prefer
their own group to other groups (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), they are more influenced by others who are close in space and time (Latané, 1981), and they are
Construal Level Theory and Regulatory Scope
7
more likely to form relationships with other people who are spatially close,
familiar, or similar to the self (Byrne, 1971; Zajonc, 1968).
The evidence for this human tendency to contract the scope of social
relationships, however, highlights the possibility—and importance—of a
less frequent alternative. Humans can, after all, sometimes transcend the
psychologically proximal and expand the scope of their social relations. They
may connect to people who are unlike themselves, who belong to group
other than their own, and who come from remote and foreign places.
The question of whether, and how, relational scope may vary has relevance
for countless domains central to human experience as social creatures. In
particular, we see current and future research focusing on three key areas
of social relations: social communication, social comparison, and social
exchange. In each case, research is beginning to ask: What determines
the scope of human relationships within this domain? For instance, what
determines whether people communicate with others who are removed
from them, or whether they confine their communication to close others?
What psychological processes lead people to expand or contract the range
of people to whom they compare themselves, or from whom they learn?
What determines people’s tendency to give and take with those who are
close by, or to expand these exchange relationships across the psychological
boundaries that separate people?
Researchers are also beginning to consider the corresponding question
of how relationships in these domains differ as a function of their scope.
For instance, new findings suggest that people communicate differently
with those who are close by or faraway: People prefer to use more concrete
representations (pictures) rather than abstract representations (words)
when communicating with other people who are closer in time, space, or
social distance (Amit, Wakslak, & Trope, 2013). We also expect that studies
will soon explore whether the basis of social comparison and learning shift
depending on how far away a target of comparison is, as well as what people
are willing to exchange with others who are near or distant. Such research
will be both theoretically important for understanding regulatory scope
and social functioning within each of these domains, as well as practically
important for understanding and improving social relationships, learning,
and social exchange.
CONCLUSION
In sum, theory and research suggest that the ability to modulate regulatory
scope is essential for adaptive functioning, and that humans rely on a range of
psychological supports to effectively pursue ends that can be closer or more
distant. These supports vary in level: Low-level supports include specific,
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
secondary, and unique aspects of an experience, and therefore help immerse
people in the here-and-now, whereas higher-level supports emphasize central and general aspects of an experience, and therefore help effectively guide
action for the there-and-then.
Importantly, the clear adaptive advantages of being able to flexibly contract
and expand one’s regulatory scope may have provided evolutionary pressure for the development of brain structures underlying these different levels
of thinking, wanting, and planning. This coevolution idea would be fruitfully
tested in future interdisciplinary research that integrates theory and methods
of brain, behavioral, and social sciences.
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ALISON LEDGERWOOD SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Alison Ledgerwood is an assistant professor of psychology at the University
of California, Davis. She received her PhD in social psychology from New
York University in 2003. Her research interests center on the social psychological tools that humans have developed to help them reach across the distances
that separate self from other, now from future, here from there, and us from
them. Her empirical work has been published in outlets such as Psychological
Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Webpage: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Ledgerwood.
Curriculum Vitae: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/Ledgerwood/cv/
Ledgerwood%20CV.pdf
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
YAACOV TROPE SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Yaacov Trope is a professor of Psychology at New York University since 1992.
He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1974 and then was
on the faculty of the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University. His major
areas of interest are social cognition, motivation, and self-regulation and he is
coeditor of several books, including Dual-Process Theories in Social Psychology (1999); Self-Control in Society, Mind, and Brain (2010), and Dual-Process
Theories of the Social Mind (2013).
Webpage: http://psych.nyu.edu/trope
NIRA LIBERMAN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Nira Liberman received her PhD in social psychology from Tel Aviv University in 1997. She held a postdoctoral position at Columbia University during
1996–1999, and an assistant professor position at Indiana University, Bloomington during 2000–2001. She has since been a professor at Tel Aviv University in the social psychology program. Her research interests include the
relations between psychological distance and mental representation, and the
effects of psychological distance on prediction, evaluation, and choice.
Webpage:
http://socsci.tau.ac.il/psy-eng/index.php/staff/faculty/29nira-liberman
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