1. Implicit Associations Reveal Asymmetry in Temporal Construal
Jessie Briggs & Andrew Karpinski
Temple University
Introduction
Implications
Methods
Construal Level Theory (CLT) posits that distal psychological distances are construed at more abstract levels than proximal distances (Trope & Liberman, 2010). Research findings such as the Temporal Doppler Effect (Caruso et al., 2013) indicate that the past feels more psychologically distant than an objectively equidistant future, suggesting that the past may be construed more abstractly than the future.
We sought to test the potential asymmetry in past and future levels of construal using Implicit Association Tests (IATs) based closely on the methodology used by Bar-Anan, Liberman & Trope (2006).
Hypothesis1: Consistent with CLT, people will hold stronger implicit associations between both the past and future with abstract and the present with concrete, than vice-versa.
Hypothesis2: The strength of the association between past and abstract will be stronger than the association between future and abstract.
Study
Construct
Category Label
All
Construal
Concrete
specific
detailed
defined
particular
Abstract
broad
general
vague
universal
Study 1
Time
Present
today
2014
currently
now
 N = 113
Past
yesterday
2013
2012
2011
Future
tomorrow
2015
2016
2017
Study 2
 N = 121
former
prior
previous
forthcoming
subsequent
next
Study 3
Dates
2010
2005
2000
2020
2025
2030
Words
Hypothesis Congruent Hypothesis Congruent
Studies 1 & 2:
Randomly assigned to sort either Past or Future vs. Present.
Study 3:
Randomly assigned to receive dates or words as target stimuli.
Participants in Study 3 also explicitly rated the breadth of each stimulus word using a 7-point scale (1= extremely specific and 7= extremely broad).
To our knowledge, our study was the first to directly compare past and future levels of construal. In doing so, we found that people implicitly construe the past as more abstract than the future, but do not explicitly judge the past and future to differ in breadth. This is likely due to the fact that people are less likely to make explicit judgments about how abstract points in time are, but instead automatically use different levels of abstraction when thinking about them.
Our findings demonstrate that construal levels could be a new avenue for temporal asymmetry research. However, whereas much of the temporal asymmetry research focusing on psychological distance has utilized explicit ratings, implicit measures may be more effective in studying asymmetries in construal.
Hypothesis Incongruent Hypothesis Incongruent
Results
References
Bar-Anan, Y., Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2006). The association between psychological distance and construal level: Evidence from an implicit association test. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: General, 135(4), doi: /
Caruso, E. M., Van Boven, L., Chin, M., & Ward, A. (2013). The Temporal Doppler Effect: When the future feels closer than the past. Psychological Science, 24(4), doi: /
Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117(2), doi: /a
There was not a significant difference in the level of abstractness that participants rated the past and future words (mean difference = 0.21, SD = 1.39), t(90) = 1.46, p = .149, (95% CI [-0.50, 0.08]), d = 0.31.
Positive IAT D scores indicate hypothesis congruent associations.