On the psychology of near and far: A construal level theoretic approach

People are frequently asked to judge, evaluate, predict, and make decisions about events that occur beyond their immediate circumstances. This chapter examines the psychological mechanisms by which people mentally transcend the immediate here-and-now, and explores the impact of these mechanisms on prediction, judgment, evaluation, and decision making. Specifically, it describes research on construal level theory (CLT), which attempts to explain the psychologically processes that support the ability to travel mentally over what the authors refer to as psychological distance. The chapter then reviews research that highlights the implications of these mechanisms for a variety of judgment and decision making phenomena, including the correspondence bias, planning fallacy, base-rate neglect, the endowment effect, the identifiable victim effect, self-control, and negotiation. The chapter selectively highlights more recent work that focuses on prediction and preference.