There Are Many Ways to See the Forest for the Trees: A Tour Guide for Abstraction

Measuring Abstract Mind-Sets Through Syntax: Automating the Linguistic Category Model

Abstraction in language has critical implications for memory, judgment, and learning and can provide an important window into a person’s cognitive abstraction level. The linguistic category model (LCM) provides one well-validated, human-coded approach to quantifying linguistic abstraction. In this article, we leverage the LCM to construct the Syntax-LCM, a computer-automated method which quantifies syntax use that indicates abstraction levels. We test the Syntax-LCM’s accuracy for approximating hand-coded LCM scores and validate that it differentiates between text intended for a distal or proximal message recipient (previously linked with shifts in abstraction). We also consider existing automated methods for quantifying linguistic abstraction and find that the Syntax-LCM most consistently approximates LCM scores across contexts. We discuss practical and theoretical implications of these findings.

Global Processing Makes People Happier Than Local Processing

Past research demonstrates that mood can influence level of perceptual processing (global vs. local). The present research shows that level of perceptual processing can influence mood as well. In four studies, we manipulated people's level of perceptual processing using a Navon letter task (Study 1), landscape scenery (Study 2), and Google Maps Street View images (Studies 3 and 4). Results from these studies and a meta-analysis support the conclusion that global processing results in higher happiness than local processing. In conjunction with previous findings that mood affects level of cognitive processing, these results suggest that the link between level of processing and mood may be reciprocal and bidirectional.

Does Abstract Mindset Decrease or Increase Deception?

Abstract. Past research produced mixed results regarding the effect of abstract/concrete mindset on the moral judgment of hypothetical scenarios. I argued that an abstract mindset could decrease or increase deception as different lines of research suggested that the effect could be in both directions. In four experiments, three different paradigms were used to manipulate mindset and its effect on participants’ own deceptive behavior was examined. Abstract mindset manipulation increased the level of deception in Study 1 and 2, but not in Study 3. Study 4 provided an opposite result as abstractness decreased deception. The results suggested that mindset manipulation might trigger multiple mechanisms having contradictory effects. I argued that future research should account for these mechanisms and individual differences in understanding the effect of abstract mindset on moral decision-making.

Does Cognitive Broadening Reduce Anger?

Past theory and research have suggested that motivationally intense affective states narrow cognitive scope. Research has also suggested manipulations that broaden cognitive scope reduce responses to appetitive positive affective stimuli and disgusting stimuli, thus suggesting that cognitive broadening reduces motivational intensity. This led to the hypothesis that cognitive broadening would reduce the approach-motivated negative emotion of anger. Seven studies assessed the effect of cognitive broadening on reported trait anger, state anger, attitudes toward anger, attributions of anger to ambiguous pictures, and accessibility of aggressive words. Results from individual studies found mixed support for these predictions. A meta-analysis, however, suggested a small but significant effect on trait anger/aggression and attitudes toward anger across studies. These results may indicate that cognitive scope, as manipulated in these studies, has a small effect on anger-related responses. Discussion speculates on potential explanations of these findings, and their importance for informing future research.

How Focusing on Superordinate Goals Motivates Broad, Long-Term Goal Pursuit: A Theoretical Perspective

Goal-setting theory states that challenging, specific, and concrete goals (i.e., subordinate goals) are powerful motivators and boost performance in goal pursuit more than vague or abstract goals (i.e., superordinate goals). Goal-setting theory predominantly focuses on single, short-term goals and less on broad, long-term challenges. This review article extends goal-setting theory and argues that superordinate goals also fulfill a crucial role in motivating behavior, particularly when addressing broad, long-term challenges. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the benefits of superordinate goals, which have received less attention in research, and to show theoretically that people pursue long-term goals more successfully when they focus on subordinate as well as superordinate goals than when they focus on either subordinate or superordinate goals alone.

Global Processing Styles Facilitate the Discovery of Structural Similarity

This study examined whether global processing style facilitates the discovery of structural similarity. In the two experiments, the participants were presented with three stories after being primed with global or local processing through a Navon task. The first story was the base story, and the other two stories shared either surface similarity or structural similarity with the base story. The results showed that, compared with the participants of the local processing and control groups, a substantially greater number of participants of the global processing group selected the story with structural similarity to the base story. This finding indicated that the global processing style can facilitate the discovery of structural similarity.

Editors' Introduction: Abstract Concepts: Structure, Processing, and Modeling

Our ability to deal with abstract concepts is one of the most intriguing faculties of human cognition. Still, we know little about how such concepts are formed, processed, and represented in mind. For example, because abstract concepts do not designate referents that can be experienced through our body, the role of perceptual experiences in shaping their content remains controversial. Current theories suggest a variety of alternative explanations to the question of "how abstract concepts are represented in the human mind." These views pinpoint specific streams of semantic information that would play a prominent role in shaping the content of abstract concepts, such as situation-based information (e.g., Barsalou & Wiemer-Hastings, ), affective information (Kousta, Vigliocco, Vinson, Andrews, & Del Campo, ), and linguistic information (Louwerse, ). Rarely, these theoretical views are directly compared. In this special issue, current views are presented in their most recent and advanced form, and directly compared and discussed in a debate, which is reported at the end of each article. As a result, new exciting questions and challenges arise. These questions and challenges, reported in this introductory article, can arguably pave the way to new empirical studies and theoretical developments on the nature of abstract concepts.

Clinical pain, abstraction, and self-control: being in pain makes it harder to see the forest for the trees and is associated with lower self-control

OBJECTIVES

Although abstract thinking is a fundamental dimension of human cognition, it has received scant attention in research on pain and cognition. We hypothesized that physical pain impairs abstraction, because when people experience pain at high intensity levels, attention becomes concretely focused on the self in the here and now, where little else matters than finding relief for the pain they are currently experiencing. We also examined the relationship between pain and self-control, predicting that pain would debilitate self-control.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Abstraction and self-reported self-control were assessed in 109 patients with musculoskeletal pain. The influence of specific pain qualities, such as pain intensity, pain interference with daily activities, pain duration, and pain persistence, was examined. Furthermore, we assessed other factors (e.g., anxiety, depression, and fatigue) that could be assumed to play a role in the pain experience and in cognitive performance.

RESULTS

Higher pain intensity and persistence were associated with less abstract thinking. Furthermore, self-control decreased with greater pain intensity, persistence, and self-reported pain interference with daily activities. Self-reported depressive symptoms mediated the overall relationship between pain and self-control.

CONCLUSION

Abstraction is compromised in patients reporting higher pain intensity and persistence. Different dimensions of pain also predict lower self-control although depression seems to account for the relationship between overall pain and self-control. The current study is the first to report an association between clinical musculoskeletal pain and abstraction. The results suggest that pain patients may suffer from a broader range of cognitive disadvantages than previously believed.

The labs (learning as behaviors) framework for higher-order learning

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to greater conceptual clarity on the topic of higher-order learning, and to enable its potential empirical measurement. It includes a framework to show how this ability is developed by engaging in specific learning behaviors, each of which constitutes its own level of learning.

Design/methodology/approach

Three criteria are used to develop the framework. Each learning behavior should lead to a change in long-term memory, should have empirical support for leading to a defined learning outcome, and should be applicable to workplace learning.

Findings

The Learning As Behaviors (LABS) framework presents three novel propositions. Four key learning behaviors of taking on a challenge, attending to information, forming meaningful connections, and practicing with feedback are required to engage in higher-order learning. There is an optimal order to the learning behaviors. Any one individual is unlikely to be motivated to engage in all four learning behaviors.

Research limitations/implications

The clear definitions and elaborated LABS framework provide a potential new means for empirical research. The learning behaviors provided are directly observable behaviors, each with its own measurable learning outcome.

Originality/value

Historically, engaging in higher-order learning has been presented as a choice that is plagued by psychological forces of self-defense, ego and image management. This paper extends that view by presenting higher-order learning as a domain-specific ability to derive fundamental principles and patterns through critical reflection. It also develops three novel propositions that lend insight into the barriers that employees face as they engage in workplace learning.

Construing the Essence: The Effects of Construal Level on Genetic Attributions for Individual and Social Group Differences

The present research links a nonsocial, contextual influence (construal level) to the tendency to endorse genetic attributions for individual and social group differences. Studies 1 to 3 show that people thinking in an abstract (vs. concrete) mind-set score higher on a measure of genetic attributions for individual and racial group differences. Study 4 showed that abstract (vs. concrete) construal also increased genetic attributions for novel groups. Study 5 explored the potential downstream consequences of construal on intergroup attitudes, and found that abstract (vs. concrete) construal led people to endorse genetic attributions in general and this was associated with increased anti-Black prejudice.

Cultivating Effective Social Support Through Abstraction: Reframing Social Support Promotes Goal-Pursuit

Social support, in theory, should promote individual goal-pursuit. However, a growing number of studies shows that receiving support can undermine goal-pursuit. Addressing this paradox, we investigated a novel idea of the effects of how people think about their social support on their goal-pursuit. Four experiments showed that participants who were led to think abstractly (vs. concretely) about their social support showed higher intent to pursue their goal (Studies 1-3) and worked harder toward their goal (Study 4). The benefits of abstracting one's social support occurred over a variety of personal goals, support types, and support-providers, indicating the generalizability and robustness of our findings. These results demonstrate that how people think about their social support influences goal-pursuit and suggest ways in which support-recipients can maximize their social support.

The Paradox of Abstraction: Precision Versus Concreteness

We introduce a novel measure of abstractness based on the amount of information of a concept computed from its position in a semantic taxonomy. We refer to this measure as precision. We propose two alternative ways to measure precision, one based on the path length from a concept to the root of the taxonomic tree, and another one based on the number of direct and indirect descendants. Since more information implies greater processing load, we hypothesize that nouns higher in precision will have a processing disadvantage in a lexical decision task. We contrast precision to concreteness, a common measure of abstractness based on the proportion of sensory-based information associated with a concept. Since concreteness facilitates cognitive processing, we predict that while both concreteness and precision are measures of abstractness, they will have opposite effects on performance. In two studies we found empirical support for our hypothesis. Precision and concreteness had opposite effects on latency and accuracy in a lexical decision task, and these opposite effects were observable while controlling for word length, word frequency, affective content and semantic diversity. Our results support the view that concepts organization includes amodal semantic structures which are independent of sensory information. They also suggest that we should distinguish between sensory-based and amount-of-information-based abstractness.

If you want to save, focus on the forest rather than on trees. The effects of shifts in levels of construal on saving decisions

Although financial decisions are expected to be rational, there is a growing body of experimental research indicating that small psychological changes in one’s mind-set in the actual decision-making moment might affect saving ratios. In this article, another type of change in one’s mind-set, which can influence saving decisions, is explored, namely the level of construal. Construal level is a key descriptor of people’s cognitive representations of targets, and is a way of characterising the mental mind-sets people use. Building on recent advances in the link between construal levels and intertemporal choices, the present research evaluates the effect of shifts in levels of construal in the very moment of decision making on people’s propensity to save money. It is suggested that triggering a high-level construal mind-set would influence individuals’ financial decisions and result in greater willingness to save than triggering a low-level construal mind-set. This assumption is supported by the findings: across three experiments, those with an abstract mind-set showed an increased willingness to save when compared to those with a concrete mind-set. The first experiment demonstrated that people in an abstract mind-set are more willing to delay financial gratification than those in a concrete mind-set. In the second and third experiments, those with an abstract mind-set showed an increased willingness to save when compared to those with a concrete mind-set. The research provides further evidence that mental states, which can be evoked by previous, unrelated tasks, such as level of cognitive abstraction, can influence everyday financial decisions. It, thus, highlights the role of situational factors that consumers may be not aware of, which still affect their savings decisions.

Task Interruption and Resumption Paradigm for Testing the Activation and Pursuit of an Abstract Thinking Goal

This protocol is based on the task interruption and resumption paradigm, the premise of which is that active goals lead to persistent behavior and thus a higher resumption rate after a period of delay or interruption. The task interruption and resumption protocol described in this research is tailored to test the activation of cognitive goals (e.g., a goal to think more abstractly). Cognitive goals may be pursued even during the interruption period; thus, to prevent this, the protocol involves cognitive distraction. The protocol consists of several stages. Specifically, the initial stage includes the goal activation process, where the treatment (versus control) condition receives a manipulation to activate the cognitive goal being tested by the researcher. In the next stage, participants are presented with the introduction of a task that is perceived to either satisfy or not satisfy the cognitive goal of interest. Importantly, this task is interrupted a few seconds after it begins. The task interruption forces a delay period and introduces a cognitive distraction to prevent the automatic pursuit and fulfillment of the cognitive goal. After the interruption period, participants are given a choice between resuming the interrupted task and abandoning the interrupted task to complete an alternative task instead. Among participants whose cognitive goals had been activated at the earlier stage, the task resumption rate should be higher if the task was perceived as an opportunity to satisfy (versus not satisfy) the goal. Such a finding would provide empirical evidence that the cognitive goal has been activated and pursued. In previous research, this protocol has been used to test whether causal uncertainty activates an abstract thinking goal. Adapting the protocol to test the activation of other cognitive goals is also discussed.

Construal Level Theory in Organizational Research

Construal level theory (CLT) offers a rich and rigorous conceptual model of how the context shapes mental representations and subsequent outcomes. The theory has generated new understanding of cognitions and behaviors such as prediction, evaluation, and decision making in the fields of psychology and consumer behavior. Recently, management and organizational scholars have begun to leverage CLT to derive novel insights regarding organizational phenomena. This article describes CLT and its theoretical underpinnings, provides a focused and integrated review of organizational research incorporating CLT, and offers an agenda for future work in which CLT opens the door to new avenues of inquiry in organizational research and reinvigorates scholarly interest in cognition in organizations.

A Taxonomic Analysis of Abstraction

An important characteristic of knowledge is that it exists at multiple levels of abstraction. This article illustrates how different levels of abstraction influence perception, comprehension, categorization, memory, and thought. Theories exist for how abstraction influences each of these cognitive processes, but there are few unifying principles for discussing these theories within a common conceptual framework. My proposed taxonomy examines three senses of abstraction: (a) an abstract entity is a concept that has no material referent, (b) abstraction focuses on only some attributes of multicomponent stimuli, and (c) an abstract idea applies to many particular instances of a category. The first refers to instances, the second to attributes of instances, and the third to classes of instances. Concrete mental representations consist of modal images for instances, equivalent attributes, and exemplars or episodes for categories. Abstract mental representations consist of amodal propositions for instances, distinctive attributes, and rules or prototypes or schema for categories. I first apply the taxonomy to words, pictures, and problems. The next section shows how categorization strategies combine with abstraction at the attribute, instance, and category levels. The subsequent section applies the taxonomy to hierarchical (subordinate, basic, superordinate) levels. A concluding section proposes directions for further development.

Relational categories are more mutable than entity categories

Across three experiments, we explore differences between relational categories-whose members share common relational patterns-and entity categories, whose members share common intrinsic properties. Specifically, we test the claim that relational concepts are more semantically mutable in context, and therefore less stable in memory, than entity concepts. We compared memory for entity nouns and relational nouns, tested either in the same context as at encoding or in a different context. We found that (a) participants show better recognition accuracy for entity nouns than for relational nouns, and (b) recognition of relational nouns is more impaired by a change in context than is recognition of entity nouns. We replicated these findings even when controlling for factors highly correlated with relationality, such as abstractness-concreteness. This suggests that the contextual mutability of relational concepts is due to the core semantic property of conveying relational structure and not simply to accompanying characteristics such as abstractness. We note parallels with the distinction between nouns and verbs and suggest implications for lexical and conceptual structure. Finally, we relate these patterns to proposals that a deep distinction exists between words with an essentially referential function and those with a predicate function.

Learner Control and e-Learning: Taking Stock and Moving Forward

Research has historically adopted one of two views toward learner discretion in training: Learner discretion is controlled by training characteristics (i.e., the instruction-centric view), or learner discretion is a substantive learning process, the understanding of which is essential to developing more effective training (i.e., the learner-centric view). More recently, training scholars have followed the general trend in scientific psychology toward increasingly nuanced and interactionist views of individual behavior. That is, the effectiveness of providing learner discretion is a joint and interactive function of both instruction-centric and learner-centric processes. Taken together, learner-centric, instruction-centric, and interactionist-centric processes propose a constellation of constructs necessary to understand learner control. Here we review the diverse literatures examining learner-control-related constructs and derive specific practical recommendations for designing e-learning. These recommendations follow from the interactionist perspective of learning in modern work environments.

The Impact of Affect on Out-Group Judgments Depends on Dominant Information-Processing Styles: Evidence From Incidental and Integral Affect Paradigms

Two studies tested the affect-as-cognitive-feedback model, in which positive and negative affective states are not uniquely associated with particular processing styles, but rather serve as feedback about currently accessible processing styles. The studies extend existing work by investigating (a) both incidental and integral affect, (b) out-group judgments, and (c) downstream consequences. We manipulated processing styles and either incidental (Study 1) or integral (Study 2) affect and measured perceptions of out-group homogeneity. Positive (relative to negative) affect increased out-group homogeneity judgments when global processing was primed, but under local priming, the effect reversed (Studies 1 and 2). A similar interactive effect emerged on attributions, which had downstream consequences for behavioral intentions (Study 2). These results demonstrate that both incidental and integral affect do not directly produce specific processing styles, but rather influence thinking by providing feedback about currently accessible processing styles.

Thinking Concretely Increases the Perceived Likelihood of Risks: The Effect of Construal Level on Risk Estimation

Recent findings on construal level theory (CLT) suggest that abstract thinking leads to a lower estimated probability of an event occurring compared to concrete thinking. We applied this idea to the risk context and explored the influence of construal level (CL) on the overestimation of small and underestimation of large probabilities for risk estimates concerning a vague target person (Study 1 and Study 3) and personal risk estimates (Study 2). We were specifically interested in whether the often-found overestimation of small probabilities could be reduced with abstract thinking, and the often-found underestimation of large probabilities was reduced with concrete thinking. The results showed that CL influenced risk estimates. In particular, a concrete mindset led to higher risk estimates compared to an abstract mindset for several adverse events, including events with small and large probabilities. This suggests that CL manipulation can indeed be used for improving the accuracy of lay people's estimates of small and large probabilities. Moreover, the results suggest that professional risk managers' risk estimates of common events (thus with a relatively high probability) could be improved by adopting a concrete mindset. However, the abstract manipulation did not lead managers to estimate extremely unlikely events more accurately. Potential reasons for different CL manipulation effects on risk estimates' accuracy between lay people and risk managers are discussed.

Why Forget? On the Adaptive Value of Memory Loss

Is forgetting mostly a positive force in human life? On the surface, this seems to not be the case, and people often associate memory loss with frustration in their everyday lives. Yet, forgetting does not have exclusively negative consequences; it also serves valuable, indeed vital, functions. In this article, I review and reflect on evidence from various areas of research, and I argue that forgetting serves at least three broad purposes. First, it is part of emotion regulation, and it promotes subjective well-being by limiting access to negative memories and by reducing unpleasant affect. Forgetting thereby allows for positivity and painlessness. Second, it is involved in knowledge acquisition, and it provides a basis for obtaining semantic and procedural knowledge by allowing for abstraction and automatization. Third, forgetting is part of context attunement, and it orients information processing for the present and the future by facilitating environmental sensitivity and by ensuring that knowledge is current, which enables timeliness and updating. Overall, I suggest that forgetting helps people to be happy, well-structured, and context sensitive, and thereby that it serves fundamentally adaptive functions.

Concreteness and Psychological Distance in Natural Language Use

Existing evidence shows that more abstract mental representations are formed and more abstract language is used to characterize phenomena that are more distant from the self. Yet the precise form of the functional relationship between distance and linguistic abstractness is unknown. In four studies, we tested whether more abstract language is used in textual references to more geographically distant cities (Study 1), time points further into the past or future (Study 2), references to more socially distant people (Study 3), and references to a specific topic (Study 4). Using millions of linguistic productions from thousands of social-media users, we determined that linguistic concreteness is a curvilinear function of the logarithm of distance, and we discuss psychological underpinnings of the mathematical properties of this relationship. We also demonstrated that gradient curvilinear effects of geographic and temporal distance on concreteness are nearly identical, which suggests uniformity in representation of abstractness along multiple dimensions.

Children's comprehension monitoring of multiple situational dimensions of a narrative

Narratives typically consist of information on multiple aspects of a situation. In order to successfully create a coherent representation of the described situation, readers are required to monitor all these situational dimensions during reading. However, little is known about whether these dimensions differ in the ease with which they can be monitored. In the present study, we examined whether children in Grades 4 and 6 monitor four different dimensions (i.e., emotion, causation, time, and space) during reading, using a self-paced reading task containing inconsistencies. Furthermore, to explore what causes failure in inconsistency detection, we differentiated between monitoring processes related to availability and validation of information by manipulating the distance between two pieces of conflicting information. The results indicated that the monitoring processes varied as a function of dimension. Children were able to validate emotional and causal information when it was still active in working memory, but this was not the case for temporal and spatial information. When context and target information were more distant from each other, only emotionally charged information remained available for further monitoring processes. These findings show that the influence of different situational dimensions should be taken into account when studying children's reading comprehension.

Why the Door-in-the-Face Technique Can Sometimes Backfire

We put forward a construal-level account to explain why the door-in-the-face (DITF) technique can sometimes backfire in the prosocial domain. We argue that after rejecting an initial prosocial request, more abstract construals promote a more coherent selfish version of the self in people’s minds, which then fosters less compliance with subsequent requests. Across three experiments, results indicated that relative to an outright request, the DITF technique was less likely to get participants to comply with various prosocial requests (e.g., writing to sick children) when participants adopted more abstract construals. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

It’s Simple and I Know It!

When negative events occur (e.g., a mass shooting, product failure, breakup), individuals naturally ask themselves why such things happen. Indeed, the search for explanations appears to be a fundamental aspect of humanity. The present research explores the role that more abstract, higher level construals play in individuals’ feelings of causal uncertainty. Specifically, we demonstrate that participants who were led to construe a negative event in a more abstract manner felt less uncertain about why that event happened (Experiments 1 and 2). Further, we demonstrate that participants who were led to construe a negative event more abstractly exhibited a more simplified understanding of the event (Experiment 3a) and that adopting a more simplified understanding of an event decreased participants’ causal uncertainty about the event (Experiment 3b). Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.