1/ 🚨 Out in JPSP, "Thinking in 3D: A Multidimensional Mapping of the Effects of Distance on Abstraction" asks: How robust is the evidence for Construal Level Theory (CLT)? Are spatial, temporal, and social distances equally influential? How do these dimensions of distance interact? 1/n - ThreadSky

michaelgilead.bsky.social • 73 days ago

1/ 🚨 Out in JPSP, "Thinking in 3D: A Multidimensional Mapping of the Effects of Distance on Abstraction" asks:

How robust is the evidence for Construal Level Theory (CLT)?
Are spatial, temporal, and social distances equally influential?
How do these dimensions of distance interact? 1/n

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michaelgilead.bsky.social•73 days ago

2/ 🌍 Imagine feeling close to someone miles away or disconnected from an event happening next door. Social distance doesn’t always align with physical space or time. Our study dives into such paradoxes: How do dimensions of distance—spatial, temporal, and social—shape our thoughts and memories?

michaelgilead.bsky.social•73 days ago

3/ ✍️ In this preregistered study with 1,001 participants, people thought of people, places, and times they deem close or far. They wrote short stories about these events, with distance factorially manipulated across spatial, temporal, and social dimensions to examine its effects on abstraction.

michaelgilead.bsky.social•73 days ago

4/ 🔬 To measure abstraction, we used two complementary approaches: Quantifying the use of concrete vs. abstract words in participants’ stories and a neural network trained to assess the degree of episodic vs. semantic details.

michaelgilead.bsky.social•73 days ago

5/ 📈 Result #1: As predicted by CLT, distance increased abstraction. All three dimensions affected abstraction, as shown by both measures: abstract language and episodic details.
This confirms that CLT stands on firm ground—a crucial finding given ongoing concerns about replicability in psychology.

michaelgilead.bsky.social•73 days ago

6/ 🧠 To objectively measure the degree of distance in texts, we trained a neural network to classify narratives as close or far across spatial, temporal, and social dimensions. This classifier is available to other researchers and can be implemented with minimal coding experience.

michaelgilead.bsky.social•73 days ago

7/ 🔗 Result #2: CLT’s second premise also received support: Distancing events on one dimension (e.g., spatially) increased their perceived distance on other dimensions (e.g., temporally, socially).

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