Abstract:

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

摘要：

心理距离概念源于时间建构理论，以自我为中心，参照点是此时此地自己的直接经验，并沿不同维度向外扩展，形成通常所认为的时间、空间、社会距离和假设性四个维度。本文述评了心理距离与建构水平的双向作用关系及其产生原因，即远心理距离使人采用核心、去背景化特征表征事物，近心理距离使人采用外围、背景化特征表征事物；反之，高水平建构使人感知到远心理距离，低水平建构使人感知到近心理距离。未来研究应关注非自我参照点的客观距离与建构水平的关系，以及心理距离与建构水平关系的心理物理学研究等。