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Now’s the time
You did it—you booked your flight to Portugal for next spring. Vamos! You sit back, making mental notes to find an authentic Airbnb in the chicest neighborhood, and you start romanticizing about Lisbon’s iconic yellow tram as you open Duolingo for some light Portuguese prep.
Now imagine you book the same trip, but just a week in advance. Suddenly, the poshness of your Airbnb doesn’t matter quite so much. You need lodging, wherever, now. You start panicking about how you’re going to get to the airport. Who is going to watch your pets, water your plants? What restaurants should you make reservations at?
You’ve just been construal level theory’d.
Construal level theory is a social psychology term that says distance is linked to whether thinking is more abstract or concrete. When the distance (in the case of your trip, temporal distance) is further off, humans tend to think in more abstract ways (how you might feel looking out from that tram in Lisbon). When the distance is shorter, people start to focus on more concrete details (travel to the airport, passport credentials, hotel check-ins).
Of course, this isn’t a rule that manifests for all people in the exact same way, but the theory is starting to turn more heads, specifically around climate change. Some see it as a way to frame society’s reluctance to act on a future that seems too distant to be really real (though this year, that future seemed a lot more like the present.)
But where does the theory not add up? Let’s navigate some space and time together.
By the digits
2: Minds behind the theory—psychologists Nira Liberman and Yaacov Trope
4: Types of psychological distances in construal level theory
22%: Increase in recycling one hotel saw by framing messages in concrete, “here and now” terms as opposed to terms more oriented toward the future
17th: Where Americans rank climate change out of 21 national issues
18.4 million: Hectares that burned in Canada this year as a result of wildfires, a record
Applied theory
Construal level theory and climate change
This year has been one when the effects of climate change have felt more physically and temporally close to a larger share of the globe than in years prior. New York City had the most polluted air in the world in June because of wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada. A quarter of the city of Derna in Libya was completely wiped out after Mediterranean Storm Daniel led to catastrophic flooding, killing thousands. Brazil is currently experiencing a deadly spring heatwave, with temperatures peaking higher than those experienced in mid-summer.
But it didn’t have to be this way. That’s why some have pointed to construal level theory as a way to better understand why some humans have taken action against climate change and why others haven’t. If the full effects of a warming planet won’t play out for another 30 years, it’s harder for humans to think about it all in clear detail, so the theory would go, meaning concrete steps would be more difficult to devise.
In the case of Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season, many have wondered if the dystopian orange skies over parts of the US that aren’t used to seeing such things (for instance, the Atlantic Northeast instead of the Pacific Northwest) might make climate change feel psychologically closer than ever before. And that newly aware region of people contains a lot of individuals with especially deep pockets and power.
But some argue that framing global warming in these terms has its limits. Adrian Brügger at the University of Bern has pointed out that construal level theory doesn’t hold up well when we think about how humans’ stable views change and the varying levels of relevance people can feel. It also doesn’t consider politics, which affects even those who are experiencing climate change first-hand.
Pop quiz
Which is not a psychological distance related to construal level theory?
A. Temporal distance (time)
B. Spatial distance (physical)
C. Social distance (relating to other people)
D. Quantum distance (atomic differences)
Construe the answer at some distance (the bottom of this email). Or just keep reading to learn more.
Construal level theory’s department of jargon
The four types of psychological distance
⌚ Time. Temporal distance considers how long ago something happened, or how long until it will happen. A trip that occurs in six months versus six days will affect the way a person thinks about it.
🌌 Space. Physical distance is determined by how far away someone physically is from something. If your friend is moving 3,000 miles (4,800 km) away, you’re more likely to think abstractly about their new home; if they’re moving down the street, you may be more interested in whether they have the same kitchen layout as you.
🗣️ Social. This type of distance has more to do with how much or little you relate to other people. If someone loves bouldering and you also love bouldering, you’ll probably feel closer to them than someone who has never rock climbed before.
🤷🏽♂️ Hypothetical. Nearness is determined by how likely an event is to occur. If it’s highly likely your friends will go camping next weekend, you’ll plan for it in more detail than if it’s just a lofty idea.
Quotable
“People’s circle of concern is often drawn near to them, meaning that they will care more about someone close to home, rather than on the opposite side of the world.”—The BBC’s features correspondent Richard Fisher on how geographical distance can affect psychological distance.
Brief history
1500s: Pieter Bruegel the Elder paints the Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, which depicts a farmer plowing his field, oblivious to Icarus drowning in the sea in the background.
1938: English steam engineer and inventor Guy Callendar connects rising carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere to a warming world.
2003: Israeli social psychologist Nira Liberman and American psychologist Yaacov Trope publish their construal level theory in Psychological Review.
2011: A study finds that UK residents that personally witnessed coastal flooding were more willing to cut back on their energy use to benefit the climate.
2023: The world experiences its hottest day on record.
Fun fact!
Most people think of wolves in an abstract way, and those thoughts tend to be positive and tied to a symbolic meaning about the mammal. But not everyone: individuals that identify as hunters, farmers, and gun and property rights advocates are more likely to think in concrete terms about the animal.
Observe this!
Landscape of the Fall of Icarus
Painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus gets at the heart of construal level theory: we pay more attention to the details when they’re closer to us. Geographical distance affects psychological distance. A drowning Icarus, feathers and all, isn’t even on the radar of the farmer focused on plowing what’s in front of him.
Take me down this 🐰 hole!
Construal level theory has long been used by marketers to make audiences feel a certain way by shifting their perceived psychological distance to a product.
Researchers in Japan recently applied construal level theory to evaluate whether cold imagery (think snow-covered cars and cool colors like blues and whites) made people feel like a product had a certain air of newness to it.
Why would cold be associated with new? For humans, coldness usually has a negative connotation. And coldness tends to increase a person’s psychological distance to an object, meaning they would experience it in more abstract and general terms.
Out of hundreds of pictures given to study participants, people indeed did prove to be more ambiguous toward cooler images, which invoked more feelings of curiosity and newsness toward those items versus toward those couched in warmer imagery. Except for antiques. Those just felt old and cold.
Maybe if the world was catastrophically cooling instead of warming, people would feel differently about it?
Poll
There are 32 days of temporal distance until Christmas. Are you thinking about:
- Fuzzy feelings of hot cocoa and cookies
- Flights and recipes and wrapping paper, OH MY!
- I’m beyond theory, I have everything done already. Everything.
- I don’t celebrate Christmas!
Give us some real data to put up against this theory.
💬 Let’s talk!
In last week’s poll about Cheez-Its, most of you (64%) said you’d choose the OG Cheez-It over other iterations like Snap’d, Puff’d, and Grooves. We concur.
🐤 X this!
🤔 What did you think of today’s email?
💡 What should we obsess over next?
Today’s email was written by Morgan Haefner (feels very misconstrued whenever someone questions her love of charcuterie) and edited by Susan Howson (would never do that).
The correct answer to the pop quiz is D., quantum distance. No Schrödinger’s cats were construed in the making of this theory.
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