The Psychology of Transcending the Here and Now

By Nira Liberman, Yaacov Trope. Science, 2008

1,158 citations recorded by the source corpus.

People directly experience only themselves here and now but often consider, evaluate, and plan situations that are removed in time or space, that pertain to others' experiences, and that are hypothetical rather than real. People thus transcend the present and mentally traverse temporal distance, spatial distance, social distance, and hypotheticality. We argue that this is made possible by the human capacity for abstract processing of information. We review research showing that there is considerable similarity in the way people mentally traverse different distances, that the process of abstraction underlies traversing different distances, and that this process guides the way people predict, evaluate, and plan near and distant situations.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, General Decision Sciences, Literature and Literary Theory

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/67bce0491a4703942b546cc169bfb1524b56d7b8

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In Applied Psychology

In General Decision Sciences

In Literature and Literary Theory

Citations in the corpus

Explicating the privacy paradox: A qualitative inquiry of online shopping consumers (2020, background): “CLT asserts that mental representations are based on psychological distance—the subjective distance of an object or event from an individual's direct immediate reality of the here and now (Liberman et al., 2007; Liberman and Trope, 2008; Trope and Liberman, 2010).”
On the merits of plant-based proteins for global food security: Marrying macro and micro perspectives (2011, background): “Generally, psychological distance is multidimensional; it includes temporal distance, spatial distance, social distance, as well as the hypothetical character and abstraction level of an issue (Liberman and Trope, 2008).”
Further Than the Eye Can See: Psychological Distance and Perception of Environmental Threats (2015, background): “Liberman and Trope (2008) developed the concept of “psychological distance” (PD), according to which more immediate events are seen as “closer in time,” more certain events as “closer in probability,” and events with greater potential for personal harm as “socially closer.””
GLOMOsys: A Systems Account of Global Versus Local Processing (2010, background): “Within the framework of CLT, research already demonstrated the influence of different distance manipulations on level of construal (for recent reviews, see Liberman & Trope, 2008; Liberman et al., 2007; Trope & Liberman, 2003), thereby broadening or narrowing perceptual and conceptual attention.”
Engaging with energy reduction : does a climate change frame have the potential for achieving broader sustainable behaviour? (2014, background): “The idea of psychological distance stems from construal level theory, which proposes that any event or object is represented at different levels of construal (Liberman & Trope, 2008).”
Not Just Any Path: Implications of Identity-Based Motivation for Disparities in School Outcomes. (2013, background): “First, temporal distance, college is a distal goal and parents and students may focus on how much they value the outcome rather than estimate the obstacles along the way (Liberman & Trope, 2008).”
Cross-Cultural Evidence for Spatial Bias in Beliefs About the Severity of Environmental Problems (2014, methodology): “For example, Milfont (2010; Milfont et al., 2011) have recently used construal level theory (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2003) as a framework for explaining spatial and temporal biases related to the perception of environmental problems.”
Counterfactual thoughts about experienced, observed, and narrated events (2011, background): “In contrast, readers' attention is not absorbed by the details of the task, and their model of the situation is likely to represent only the choice and the negative outcome of the character's performance (see Liberman & Trope, 2008 ).”
Seeing the forest beyond the trees (2015, background): “Locations provided in their paper do not always match with data provided in RAINFOR publications or websites (Baker et al., 2004; Malhi et al., 2006; http://www.rainfor.org/).”