Construal Level Theory: The Effects of Distance

What is this page about?

An explainer of construal level theory, the principle that psychological distance (in time, space, social relation, or hypotheticality) changes whether people represent something abstractly or concretely, opening with Liberman and Trope's 1998 study where imagining opening a bank account tomorrow produced concrete details while imagining it next year produced abstract purposes. It covers the four dimensions of distance, the intellectual lineage, four case studies (the founding experiment, spatial distance and abstraction, abstract thinking and self-control, and consumer behavior), and the empirical findings and replication concerns.

What has been corrected on this page?

Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.

1. 11 July 2026 · corrected by Emir Baycan

   2 corrections applied: Co-author is Peter M. Gollwitzer, not 'Erin'; the 2004 Freitas/Gollwitzer/Trope paper appeared in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (per the article's own reference list), not JPSP. | The 2013 Maglio paper in the article's own reference list is Maglio, Trope & Liberman in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, not Maglio, Polman & Alter in Psychological Science.

   Before

   Anthony Freitas, Erin Gollwitzer, and Yaacov Trope published "The Role of Construal Level in Self-Control" (2004, JPSP); Scott Maglio, Evan Polman, and Adam Alter published a study in Psychological Science (2013) on spatial-temporal distance.

   After

   Body content already correctly named Peter Gollwitzer (JESP 2004) and Maglio, Trope & Liberman (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2013). Found and fixed a THIRD, independent fabrication in the FAQ answer on self-control, which had drifted to a different wrong attribution entirely: 'Anthony Freitas, Peter Salovey, and Nira Liberman's 2001 and 2008 work' -> corrected to 'Anthony Freitas, Peter Gollwitzer, and Yaacov Trope's 2004 work' to match the body and bibliography.

   Why: Body/bibliography attribution was already correct on the live site. FAQ JSON-LD schema independently carried a different unverified co-author name (Peter Salovey) for the same Freitas et al. self-control finding; corrected to match verified body text and re-encoded via the standard faq op-sequence (base64,json,base64,json), round-trip verified.

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Who checked this page?

1 contributor has checked "Construal Level Theory: The Effects of Distance" on When Notes Fly. Each name below links to that person's public CitePep profile, where every contribution they have made is listed with the exact change they proposed.