Situating construal

Anna Clark & Gün Semin
Free University Amsterdam

Events can be construed in different ways. Level of construal can vary from concrete, focusing on the local and specific aspects, to abstract, which emphasizes the general or global features. Research to date shows various influences on construal, e.g., the psychological distance (i.e., temporal or spatial) of the event or object, or motivational and cognitive processes such as those underlying the linguistic intergroup bias. The question is what determines construal in any given context? By situating construal in a social context we show how construal level can be predicted based on the relative relevancies of concreteness and abstractness. In our research we have examined construal in a conversational context. Communicators were asked to talk about an event to another person. The temporal distance of the event in question (close vs. distant) and the conversational partners’ shared knowledge of the event present, absent, unspecified) were manipulated orthogonally to create different conversational contexts for talking about the event. It was found that temporal distance information directed construal level when no information about the conversational partners’ existing knowledge was given (unspecified condition); close events were construed more concretely than distant events. When information about the conversational partners’ shared knowledge was present, however, this determined construal level regardless of the temporal distance of the event; construal was more concrete when shared knowledge was present. These results suggest that construal level is flexible and shifts as a function of the conversational contexts as different cues have different implications for the relevance of concreteness and abstractness. In situating construal and examining the interpersonal and social processes our work adds to existing research that has examined construal as the product of a learned association (e.g., construal level theory) and cognitive and motivational processes (e.g., the linguistic intergroup bias).