There Are Many Ways to See the Forest for the Trees

Abstract

Abstraction is a useful process for broadening mental horizons, integrating new experiences, and communicating information to others. Much attention has been directed at identifying the causes and consequences of abstraction across the subdisciplines of psychology. Despite this attention, an integrative review of the methods that are used for studying abstraction is missing from the literature. The current article aims to fill this gap in several ways. First, we highlight the different ways in which abstraction has been defined in the literature and then suggest an integrative definition. Second, we provide a tour of the different ways abstraction has been manipulated and measured over the years. Finally, we highlight considerations for researchers in choosing methods for their own research.

Keywords

abstraction construal gist global general representation specificity concreteness

Abstraction was initially a hot topic in the early years of cognitive and developmental psychology, and much attention was given to understanding how people store, retrieve, and integrate knowledge (e.g., categories, schemas, scripts; see Brown, 1958; Kay, 1971; Rosch, 1975; Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976; Schank & Abelson, 1977). However, the topic did not garner as much attention from other subdisciplines of the field until more recently. Indeed, this is an exciting time for abstraction research, because the past 15 years have witnessed a resurgence of such research across all areas of psychology, perhaps because of the recognition that any experience in life can be construed in broad, abstract terms or in specific, concrete detail. As Aristotle (2013/350 B.C.E.) so eloquently noted, people’s ability to think at a higher level of abstraction can influence the very fabric of human interaction. Consider, for example, that the field of psychology has shown how people’s impressions of and subsequent actions toward others are often based on abstract stereotypes rather than unique individuating information (e.g., Sherman, Allen, & Sacchi, 2012). Or consider that psychology has shown how people’s satisfaction with their romantic partners is often driven by their focus on abstract idealizations rather than specific aspects of reality (e.g., Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996). Moreover, just as people can think about others in more or less abstract terms, people can also think about themselves at varying levels of abstraction (Wakslak, Nussbaum, Liberman, & Trope, 2008).

Although each area of psychology has a unique approach to studying abstraction, there is clear consensus that abstraction influences the way people learn information (e.g., Glenberg, Willford, Gibson, Goldberg, & Zhu, 2011; Hinds, Patterson, & Pfeffer, 2001; Mandler & McDonough, 1998; McGinnis & Zelinski, 2000), form judgments (e.g., Henderson, Fujita, Trope, & Liberman, 2006; Klein, Loftus, Trafton, & Fuhrman, 1992; Ledgerwood, Trope, & Chaiken, 2010; Wakslak, 2012), and regulate behavior (e.g., Freitas, Gollwitzer, & Trope, 2004; Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006; Schmeichel, Vohs, & Duke, 2011; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987). Given the strong interest in the study of abstraction in psychology, it is important for researchers to have a common understanding of both what abstraction is and how it is studied. Possibly because of the renewed excitement in this topic, abstraction has been defined in a number of different ways (Barsalou, 2003). This muddle may explain why the field has been virtually silent when it comes to identifying the best methods for studying abstraction. In this article, we start by defining abstraction. Then, we briefly review the history of abstraction across several subdisciplines of psychology. Finally, we present a tour of the different ways in which abstraction has been manipulated and measured over the years.¹ Throughout, we identify unresolved issues and opportunities for future research.

What Is Abstraction?

Given the abundance of research illustrating the causes and consequences of abstraction, it may come as no surprise to the reader that the concept has not been consistently articulated in the literature. Indeed, this could explain the many articles dealing with abstraction that either failed to define the concept or used the term as part of its definition (e.g., Duñabeitia, Aviles, Afonso, Scheepers, & Carreiras, 2009; Goodman, Webb, & Stewart, 2009; Randell, Goyal, Saunders, & Reed, 2011). Moreover, a host of terms have been used interchangeably with abstraction (e.g., global, general, gist, summary, holistic, relational), resulting in different definitions. For example (from least to most recent):

The term level of abstraction within a taxonomy refers to a particular level of inclusiveness. (Rosch et al., 1976, p. 383)

According to [Jean Piaget’s description], abstraction réfléchissante describes what occurs when the subject becomes aware of some, hitherto unnoticed action or operation . . . . We may contrast this process with what Piaget refers to as ‘abstraction empirique’, which corresponds more closely to the usual idea of abstraction. This occurs when the subject discovers some rule governing a phenomenon from his/her experiences with that phenomenon. What distinguishes abstraction empirique from abstraction réfléchissante is that in the former there are not formed any new coordinations of previously existing cognitive elements, no restructuration, simply the acquisition of a rule concerning the phenomenon. No new understanding is gained, and the rule may or may not be remembered. Thus generalizing from a set of actions may be simply abstraction empirique, with no lasting consequences for cognitive development, or, if accompanied by a restructurization of an existing structure, may be abstraction réfléchissante and thus result in an increase of cognitive power and understanding. (Markovits, 1978, pp. 75–76)

[Abstraction] refers to the process by which a global meaning, gist, or summary is abstracted from the communication and stored in memory . . . abstraction may be a by-product of integration such that it follows from integration automatically, for reasons of cognitive economy. (Schul, 1983, p. 46)

[Abstract action identification provides] a more comprehensive understanding of the action. (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987, p. 4)

[W]e proposed that the more abstract a term, the more informative it would be about a person, the enduring a quality it would express. Simultaneously, the abstractness of a category implies that it would be less informative about specific situations, less verifiable and more disputable than concrete terms. (Semin & Fiedler, 1991, p. 7)

[Abstract representations] convey the essential gist and meaning of events and actions (e.g., inferences of global traits that are invariant across different situations, such as “laziness,” or representations of “why” an action is performed and of its end consequences). (E. Watkins, Moberly, & Moulds, 2008, p. 365)

The sense of abstraction here is close to the sense in which the term is used in informatics generally, where structure common to some data or mathematical entities can be reasoned about while ignoring properties that differ from instance to instance. (Pease, Smaill, & Guhe, 2009, p. 346)

Whenever we move to a higher-level [abstract] construct we make a distinction between primary, defining features, which are relatively stable and invariant, and secondary features, which may change with changes in context and are hence omitted from the higher-level representation. (Shapira, Liberman, Trope, & Rim, 2012, p. 231)

Although these example definitions refer to concepts that may seem distinct (e.g., essential features, broader meaning, global traits, rules), they all emphasize that abstraction is a process of information reduction that allows for efficient storage and retrieval of central knowledge (e.g., categorization). Therefore, in this article, we define abstraction as a process of identifying a set of invariant central characteristics of a thing. We recognize that psychologists rarely use the term thing in their articles, because it may sound too nonspecific. For example, social psychologists often use the phrase attitude object instead of thing (e.g., Ledgerwood et al., 2010). However, we adopt Brown’s (1958) term of thing in our overview of abstraction, because it reinforces the point that people can identify invariant central characteristics of inanimate and animate objects, events, actions, and ideas.

Invariant central characteristics are any properties that increase the likelihood of accurately identifying the thing when it is encountered across various contexts. This idea is similar to the concept of core features described by Smith, Shoben, and Rips (1974) in their discussion of conceptual representation. Invariant central characteristics may be internal (e.g., observable features, behaviors) or external (e.g., functions, roles things play, goals things help to accomplish, an overall structure or meaning of things). Consider, for example, that invariant central characteristics of a bridge may be features (e.g., a physical structure over a body of water) or a function (e.g., things that connect two or more things to each other, such as pieces of land, pieces of music, or ideas; Gentner & Kurtz, 2005).

Note that people must operate at some level of abstraction when thinking about things, and therefore people can think about anything in more or less abstract terms (see Table 1 for examples). In addition, given that abstraction operates on a continuum, we use the term levels of abstraction throughout the article to reflect this point. Lower levels of abstraction (i.e., higher levels of concreteness) capture thoughts that are more specific, detailed, vivid, and imageable (e.g., Strack, Schwarz, & Gschneidinger, 1985), often encompassing readily observable characteristics (e.g., furry dog, ceramic cup; Medin & Ortony, 1989). Higher levels of abstraction (i.e., lower levels of concreteness), on the other hand, include fewer readily observable characteristics and therefore capture thoughts that are less imageable (e.g., friendly dog, beautiful cup). It is noteworthy that as a thing gets more abstract, the multitude of its incidental characteristics receive less weight, and therefore the number of central invariant characteristics that are necessary to identify the thing gets smaller. For instance, the characteristics that facilitate identifying an office chair (e.g., has wheels, spins) would not apply to all things that constitute a chair; likewise, the characteristics of a chair would not apply to all things that constitute furniture.

Table 1.

Examples of Abstraction

Thing	More abstract	Even more abstract
Apple	Fruit	Nutrition
John	Male	Human
A kiss	Showing affection	Love
Donating $10	Giving	Altruism
Pressing a lever	Voting	Influencing an election

Note: People can think abstractly in multiple directions (e.g., by supersets, function, or meaning). Although apples are always a subset of fruit, pressing a lever is not always a subset of influencing an election. Indeed, one might press a lever to play a slot machine. On the other hand, pressing a lever is a function that influences an election. Likewise, a kiss conveys a meaning of love.

Common to each of the subdisciplines of psychology is the notion that processing information at different levels of abstraction is functional (e.g., Brown, 1958). For example, abstraction is functional for understanding, predicting, and regulating one’s behavior toward things that are psychologically distant (e.g., making predictions about things that are removed from the self in time or space; see Trope & Liberman, 2010, 2012). Whereas people can directly experience things that are real and in the here and now (e.g., a question during one’s job interview), things that are removed from that reference point and thus psychologically distant must be mentally represented (e.g., a possible question during one’s upcoming job interview). To maximize their accuracy when making judgments and decisions regarding psychologically distant things, people must broaden their mental horizons by focusing on central characteristics of those things that are likely to be invariant across distance; therefore, as things become more psychologically distant, people think about them at progressively higher levels of abstraction.

In addition to the role that abstraction plays in traversing psychological distance, it serves as an efficient tool for organizing and storing knowledge (e.g., Kay, 1971; Rosch et al., 1976). Things can be mentally sorted into groups (or categories) on the basis of invariant central characteristics. For example, lions, tigers, and elephants can be grouped together on the basis of invariant central characteristics of mammals (e.g., having warm blood, mammary glands, and hair), and mammals, reptiles, and amphibians can be grouped together on the basis of invariant central characteristics of animals (e.g., motile, multicellular organisms). In addition, abstraction allows people to retrieve and apply previously learned knowledge to newly encountered things (e.g., Glenberg et al., 2011; Scheepers et al., 2011; Schul, 1983). For example, people may use their knowledge about the layout of large cities (e.g., street numbers increase as one goes north) to successfully navigate traveling in New York City for the first time. Given the many ways that abstraction is functional (see Brown, 1958; Glenberg et al., 2011; Hinds et al., 2001; McGinnis & Zelinski, 2000; Rosch et al., 1976, for different subdisciplinary perspectives on the functionality of abstraction), psychologists have been interested in the various ways abstraction facilitates learning, judgment and decisions, and behavior regulation. Next, we briefly review some important theoretical contributions to the growing literature on abstraction.

Theoretical Roots of Abstraction

Cognitive and developmental psychologists initially focused on the development of the ability to engage in abstraction (e.g., Brown, 1958; Rosch et al., 1976) and later began to examine the role of abstraction in memory and learning (e.g., Kreitler, Zigler, & Kreitler, 1983; Medin, Dewey, & Murphy, 1983). More recently, theoretical and applied research on the causes and downstream consequences of abstraction has emerged in other areas of psychology (e.g., social, clinical, neuroscience). Although we could write a full-length review on the concept of abstraction from each of these subdisciplines, we instead describe only a few major theoretical contributions from different areas in psychology. Despite its limited scope, the following section highlights the ways in which different areas provide unique insights into the role of abstraction for human functioning. We begin the next section by reviewing research that deals with the development of people’s ability to shift between higher and lower levels of abstraction, and then we move on to discuss some of the major antecedents and downstream consequences of abstraction for judgment, decision making, and behavior.

How does abstraction develop?

Debate in the early literature on category development focused on whether category learning moves from more concrete to more abstract levels or vice versa (Rosch et al., 1976). Brown (1958) argued that categorical language develops as a function of utility. According to his perspective, children first learn to name a thing on the basis of its usual level of utility. For a child who owns a dog, for example, the usual level of utility might be the dog’s name (e.g., Fido), but for a child who does not own a dog, the label of dog is sufficient. Accordingly, as the usual level of utility changes, so does the label. Consider that children may be asked by teachers and peers in school whether they own any pets, transforming a four-legged animal that barks from a relatively more concrete category label (dog) to one that is more abstract (pets). Likewise, children dealing with money for the first time may learn to differentiate between quarters and dimes, moving from a more abstract category label (money) to one that is more concrete (quarters and dimes).

In general, by a very early age, children are able to move in both directions in the hierarchy by learning increasingly detailed facts about already familiar things and by making sense of novel things by integrating and comparing commonalities among familiar and novel things. Indeed, some research shows that children initially start off thinking more abstractly and then become more concrete thinkers (e.g., Mandler & McDonough, 1998, 2000), and other research shows the opposite pattern (e.g., Callanan, 1985; Rosch et al., 1976). Findings that deal with the nature of category learning have implications for how parents and teachers can best communicate knowledge and facilitate learning at different stages of child development (Callanan, 1985).

What are the antecedents of abstraction?

Several situational factors influence whether people think in more concrete or more abstract terms. As noted earlier, when people have to respond to psychologically distant things (e.g., experiences in the distant future, hypothetical experiences), they engage in abstraction as a way to broaden their mental horizons so that they can traverse the psychological distance (Trope & Liberman, 2010, 2012; also see Epstude & Peetz, 2012). Affective experiences also alter people’s level of abstraction; a positive mood has been shown to promote abstraction (e.g., Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005; Gasper & Clore, 2002; but also see Huntsinger, Clore, & Bar-Anan, 2010). Finally, people describe positive ingroup and negative outgroup behaviors in more abstract, invariant terms than negative ingroup and positive outgroup behaviors. This implies that people can use abstraction to protect self-esteem (Maass, 1999; Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989; also see Campbell & Sedikides, 1999; Miller & Ross, 1975).

Some variables have a more complex relationship with abstraction. For example, on the one hand, people think more abstractly when they have more expertise dealing with things (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987, 1989; see also Hinds et al., 2001; Wicklund, Braun, & Waibel, 1994). On the other hand, expertise also pushes the basic level at which people think about things to a more concrete level (Tanaka & Taylor, 1991). To illustrate, a dog expert may typically think at the level of specific breeds rather than at the broader level of dog.

What are the major consequences of abstraction?

Abstraction has consequences across a variety of phenomena. For example, abstraction has been shown to shift people’s time perspective, because it presumably allows people to take into account psychologically distant things (Liberman, Trope, McCrea, & Sherman, 2007). This in turn has been shown to improve personal outcomes in domains such as creativity (e.g., Förster, Friedman, & Liberman, 2004; Jia, Hirt, & Karpen, 2009; Liberman, Polack, Hameiri, & Blumenfeld, 2012), self-control (e.g., Fujita & Han, 2009; Fujita & Roberts, 2010; Fujita, Trope, et al., 2006), and life satisfaction (e.g., Updegraff & Suh, 2007). Moreover, abstraction has been shown to have positive as well as negative effects on personal outcomes in the health domain. On the one hand, abstraction has been shown to help people deal with mood problems (e.g., Ayduk & Kross, 2009; Kross, Ayduk, & Mischel, 2005; Mergenthaler, 1996). On the other hand, abstraction has been shown to promote certain biases in health risk perceptions (e.g., a patient underestimates the likelihood that she is having a heart attack because her symptoms are not typical; Reyna, 2004) and to be positively associated with the severity of symptoms in obsessive-compulsive disorder (Dar & Katz, 2005).

Abstraction also has interpersonal consequences. Specifically, higher levels of abstraction are associated with more stereotyping (e.g., Brewer & Gardner, 1996; McCrea, Wieber, & Myers, 2012) and dispositional attributions of others (Kozak, Marsh, &Wegner, 2006; McIntyre, Paulson, Lord, & Lepper, 2004). In the realm of social influence, abstraction seems to foster both resistance to persuasion by decreasing the impact of contextual information (e.g., incidental strangers’ opinions) on people’s beliefs (e.g., Ledgerwood et al., 2010) as well as openness to persuasion by increasing the impact of more cross-situational information (e.g., consensus opinion; Ledgerwood & Callahan, 2012) on people’s beliefs. Furthermore, abstraction has consequences for social conflict, because it has been shown to facilitate cooperative problem solving and beneficial negotiations (e.g., Giacomantonio, De Dreu, & Mannetti, 2010; Henderson, 2011; Henderson & Trope, 2009). In summary, abstraction enables people to broaden their mental horizons, which has consequences for a variety of important judgments, decisions, and behaviors. In the next section, we examine the various methods for studying abstraction.

Methods for Studying Abstraction

With the recent resurgence of interest in abstraction, empirical methods have been developed to study both the causes and consequences of abstraction. Much of this is due to research inspired by social-cognitive theories of abstraction (e.g., action identification theory, Vallacher & Wegner, 1987, 1989; construal-level theory, Trope & Liberman, 2010, 2012; GLOMO^sys: a systems account of global vs. local processing, Förster & Dannenberg, 2010). Our aim in this article is not to summarize the vast literature that has grown up around the study of abstraction. Instead, we provide a field guide to existing manipulations and measures of abstraction (see Table 2). There are two purposes for this review. First, for researchers interested in exploring abstraction, we contrast the variety of existing methods as an aid for selecting an appropriate method for your studies. Second, for consumers of this literature, the array of manipulations and measures can be confusing. This review is intended to clarify the approaches taken by different researchers.

Table 2.

Manipulations and Measures of Abstraction

Task type and extant tasks	IV	DV	Focal	Number of studies
Abstraction of perceptual stimuli: focus on a perceptual whole (abstract) or parts that make the whole (concrete)
Map task	X	—	—	~30
Gestalt completion vs. WISC Picture Completion	X	X	—	< 5
Hierarchical letters	X	X	—	100+
Kimchi-Palmer figures	X	X	—	< 5
Sensory tasks	X	X	—	< 5
Abstraction of objects: focus on similarities (abstract) or differences (concrete) across objects
Prototypes vs. examples	X	—	—	1
Common vs. distinguishing characteristics	X	—	—	< 5
Categories vs. examples	X	—	F	~20
Traits vs. examples	X	—	F	< 5
Nonalignable vs. alignable comparisons	X	—	—	< 5
Abstract vs. concrete self-thought	X	—	F	< 5
Atypical examples	—	X	—	< 5
Words vs. pictures	X	X	—	< 5
Broad vs. narrow categorization	X	X	—	< 5
Abstraction of actions: focus on why an action happens (abstract) or contextual behaviors (concrete)
Past-event priming	X	—		< 5
Goal priming	X	—	F	~50
Traits vs. behaviors	X	—	F	< 5
Implications of event on society vs. a single person	X	—	—	< 5
Segmentation of experiences	—	X	—	< 5
Linguistic category model	—	X	—	~50
Constructed text	—	X	—	1
Rating of life event	—	X	—	< 5
Behavior identification form	X	X	—	100+

Note: WISC = Weschsler Intelligence Scale for Children (Wechsler, 2003). Across different tasks, abstraction served as either the independent variable (IV; manipulation) or the dependent variable (DV; measure). In some tasks, abstraction about a focal thing (F) was directly manipulated. Tasks are listed in the order they are described in the main text. Study counts were calculated based on a search through articles that cited original task citations of manipulations and measures. Study counts reflect the number of studies in which the original manipulation/measure or a very similar adaptation was used (search conducted November 2012).

Roles for abstraction tasks

Manipulations

Manipulations can be used to induce more abstract or more concrete thinking to study the consequences of abstraction on judgment and decision making as well as behavior. Note that the majority of abstraction manipulations reviewed in this article were created to induce a more concrete or more abstract mindset—an accessible set of cognitive operations that influence how subsequent information is organized and interpreted (Ach, 1910; Külpe, 1904; Rees & Israel, 1935; also see Bargh & Chartrand, 2000; Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1987; Smith & Branscombe, 1987). That is, most of the manipulations have been shown to produce transfer effects on unrelated things. For example, inducing a more abstract mindset has been shown to increase attention to unrelated abstract information about other people (e.g., stereotypes; McCrea et al., 2012).

Although most manipulations we describe are used to induce a general mindset, a few researchers have used focal abstraction tasks to induce people to think more abstractly or more concretely about a particular thing. Throughout our review, we highlight cases in which researchers used a focal abstraction task, rather than a mindset task (for easy reference, we also identify these focal tasks in Table 2). We note this distinction in case readers want an illustration of how one can tailor a manipulation to be about a particular thing. After our review of the methods, we discuss the pros and cons of mindset versus focal tasks.

Note that some manipulations can induce abstraction indirectly through variables that affect abstraction (e.g., processing fluency and psychological distance; Alter & Oppenheimer, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2003, 2010; respectively). However, because such indirect manipulations can also influence processes other than abstraction (e.g., processing fluency influences liking, novelty, and perceptions of truth), we do not cover these in our review.

Measures

Measures allow researchers to evaluate the extent to which people are engaging in more abstract versus more concrete thinking. Furthermore, measures can serve as manipulation checks and provide construct validation of new manipulations of abstraction.

What is abstracted: Section overview

At the highest level, we organize the methods in this section on the basis of which things are abstracted in the task (e.g., perceptual stimuli, objects, actions). We ground our organization in prominent theories that deal with abstraction of those things. Within each of these three sections, we group tasks as manipulations, measures, or both. For tasks that have served as both manipulations and measures, we describe them in the order they were created (e.g., a task was first a measure and was later adapted into a manipulation). Throughout our review, we discuss key constructs that each task has been used to study.

Abstraction of perceptual stimuli

People can attend to perceptual information in different ways. For example, any stimulus can be attended to by focusing on the entire figure or Gestalt (global scope) or on disparate details of the stimulus (local scope). GLOMO^sys posits that global versus local processing not only carries over to subsequent tasks but also maps onto conceptual abstraction (Förster & Dannenberg, 2010). Recall that abstraction is a process of identifying invariant central characteristics of things. In the case of perceptual stimuli, although the details of a stimulus (e.g., hair color) may be interchangeable, the overarching structure (e.g., a whole face) is invariant across contexts. Existing perceptual tasks involve attention to various global or local sensory stimuli. Although many perceptual tasks were originally intended to measure global versus local attention (see Kimchi, 1992, for a review), they have recently become popular for exploring the relationship between abstraction and various social and cognitive constructs.

Manipulations

In a map task, perceptual scope is manipulated by instructing participants to focus on a map (Friedman, Fishbach, Förster, & Werth, 2003; see also Förster, 2009). In the global processing condition (more abstract), participants focus on the map as a whole to answer subsequent questions about the overall shape of the map. In the local processing condition (more concrete), participants focus on the details of the map. This task has been used to explore the effects of abstraction on creativity (Friedman et al., 2003) and judgments of similarity among objects (e.g., Förster, 2009).

Measures

No abstraction-of-perceptual-stimuli tasks have been used solely as a measure.

Manipulations and measures

Gestalt completion versus WISC picture completion

The Gestalt completion task (Street, 1931) requires participants to detect the overall form in 13 fragmented pictures (e.g., dog, bicycle, stove; see Fig. 1a for an example). As a measure of abstraction, independent raters blind to condition score how many figures are correctly identified and how abstractly participants label their responses (Huang, Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Guillory, 2011; Smith & Trope, 2006). Gestalt completion has been used to explore the effects of power on abstraction (Huang et al., 2011; Smith & Trope, 2006). The index of abstraction has typically been the correctness of answers. However, one particular strength of this measure is that reaction time could also be measured, which may be useful for researchers with particular theoretical interests.

Fig. 1.

Sample items from (a) Gestalt completion (Street, 1931), (b) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) picture completion (Wechsler, 2003), (c) hierarchical letters (Navon, 1977), and (d) Kimchi-Palmer figures (Kimchi & Palmer, 1982).

Recently, McCrea et al. (2012) paired the Gestalt-completion task with the picture-completion subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC; Wechsler, 2003) to create a more abstract (Gestalt) versus more concrete (WISC) manipulation. Participants in the WISC picture-completion subtest identify missing features of 13 pictures (e.g., missing door hinge, missing veins from a leaf, missing ladder rung; see Fig. 1b for an example). McCrea and his colleagues were interested in whether abstraction increases stereotyping.

Hierarchical letters

The Navon letters task (Navon, 1977) is one of the most prominent measures and manipulations of abstraction. It was first developed as a measure and later developed into a manipulation. The task involves the configuration of small (local) letters into larger (global) letters (e.g., the letter H composed of smaller versions of the letter L; see Fig. 1b, for an example). In a measure created by Liberman and Förster (2009), participants see the configurations of letters on a succession of trials. Participants are instructed to press one computer key if the configuration of letters contains an H and another key if the figure contains an L. All configurations contain either an H or an L. Each is sometimes used as the large (global) letter and sometimes as the small (local) letter. People are considered to be thinking more abstractly (i.e., less concretely) if they identify the large letter faster than they identify the small letter. As a manipulation, global or local focus is induced by asking participants to name the large or small letters, respectively, in a series of letter configurations (see Macrae & Lewis, 2002).

Hierarchical letters has been used to measure abstraction as a function of psychological distance (e.g., Liberman & Förster, 2009), affect (e.g., Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2010), and global versus local attention (e.g., Förster, 2011). As a manipulation, the task has been used to show the effect of abstraction on judgment and decision making (e.g., Dijkstra, van der Pligt, van Kleef, & Kerstholt, 2012; Förster, 2009; Förster & Denzler, 2012; McCrea et al., 2012; Wakslak & Trope, 2009), affect (e.g., Huntsinger et al., 2010), and face recognition (e.g., Macrae & Lewis, 2002).

Kimchi-Palmer figures

Despite its popularity in abstraction and global-local processing research, the hierarchical-letters task has received some criticism. One particular criticism is that different reaction times in identifying the global versus local letters might be driven by how easy it is to see the letters (Kimchi, 1992; Love, Rouder, & Wisniewski, 1999). Kimchi and Palmer (1982, p. 526) developed the Kimchi-Palmer figures task to control for this potential confound. Presumably, it is easier to identify shapes than letters when they are the local elements of a figure. Participants see a visual target figure in which a large geometrical shape (e.g., a square) is composed of a different, smaller geometrical shape (e.g., triangles). Participants then see two more figures; in one of them, the local elements match the local elements of the target figure (e.g., triangles), and in the other, the local elements match the global element of the target figure (e.g., squares). Participants then choose which of the two figures most closely resembles the target figure (see Fig. 1d, for an example). As an alternative, Love et al. (1999, p. 301) developed a task that controls for size and ease on the basis of matches between 3 × 3 matrices of geometrical shapes.

Whereas the hierarchical-letters task requires a computer to measure reaction time, one of the strengths of Kimchi-Palmer figures is that the task is adaptable to any medium (e.g., paper-pencil, computer). The task has been used as a manipulation to explore the effects of abstraction on decision making (Wakslak & Trope, 2009) and global versus local attention (Förster, 2011). The task has also been used as a measure to explore the effects of darkness on abstraction (Steidle, Werth, & Hanke, 2011).

Nonvisual sensory tasks

In all nonvisual sensory tasks, participants are blindfolded to control for the influence of visual attention (Förster, 2011). Participants are then instructed to taste, touch, smell, or listen to the individual components (more concrete) or overall whole (more abstract) of foods (e.g., a mixed cereal), objects (e.g., four paper boxes glued together), scents (e.g., potpourri), or sounds (e.g., a song), respectively. Förster (2011) validated the manipulations by demonstrating that sensory tasks influence global versus local reaction times to the hierarchical-letters task. More recently, Förster and Denzler (2012) used sensory tasks to show that abstraction (vs. concreteness) promotes creative (vs. analytical) thought. Although sensory tasks are a creative alternative to other global versus local tasks, they are limited in the sense that they are only amenable to being performed in a laboratory setting.

Abstraction of objects

Theories of categorization contend that objects can be identified and organized by searching for invariant central characteristics (e.g., features and functions) that are similar across multiple instantiations of an object or across different objects that allow them to be grouped under a broader category (Kay, 1971; Rosch et al., 1976). Therefore, many of the tasks covered in this section force people to consider similarities (more abstract) or differences (more concrete) between objects. Many of the tasks in this grouping were created by construal-level-theory researchers interested in the effects of psychological distance (and concomitant levels of abstraction) on judgment and decision making (e.g., Malkoc, Zauberman, & Bettman, 2010), and behavior (e.g., Fujita, Trope et al., 2006).

Manipulations

Prototypes versus examples

In the prototype-versus-examples task developed by Mullen, Pizzuto, and Foels (2002), participants examine a set of 11 real drinking glasses. Participants in the prototype (more abstract) condition are instructed to pay attention to what the glasses have in common and keep in mind what the average and typical glass in that set would look like. Participants in the exemplar (more concrete) condition are instructed to pay attention to the differences between the glasses and to think about what each individual glass looks like. As a manipulation check, participants complete a breadth of categorization task with a new set of objects (e.g., stickers; see the Broad versus narrow categorization section for our discussion of the breadth-of-categorization task). The task was used to study the effects of abstraction on social judgment. A key strength of this task is that it is adaptable for use with a variety of objects (inanimate or animate) that people can compare.

Common versus distinguishing characteristics

Participants see sets of four pictures (e.g., a t-shirt, high-heeled shoes, sandals, jeans) and answer questions requiring them to generate common (more abstract) or distinguishing (more concrete) features and functions among items in each set (Fujita & Roberts, 2010). This manipulation has been used only to explore the effect of abstraction on self-regulation (Fujita & Roberts, 2010). However, we believe the task could be effective for studying a variety of other constructs.

Categories versus examples

Originally created by Fujita, Trope, et al. (2006), this task is the most prominent abstraction-of-objects task. Participants generate their own overarching category labels (more abstract) or specific examples (more concrete) for several objects (e.g., pasta, soap, bag, book). The task has been used to explore the effects of abstraction on self-regulation (e.g., Fujita, Trope, et al., 2006; see also Fujita & Roberts, 2010; Fujita & Sasota, 2011), self and identity (e.g., Mok & Morris, 2012; Vess, Arndt, & Schlegel, 2011), prejudice (Luguri, Napier, & Dovidio, 2012), judgment and decision making (e.g., Lammers, 2012; Maglio & Trope, 2011; Wakslak & Trope, 2009), and persuasion (e.g., Hong & Lee, 2010; Ledgerwood et al., 2010).

In a modification created by Henderson and Trope (2009), rather than activating a more concrete or abstract mindset, participants are asked to generate category labels for negotiation issues or examples of negotiation issues. This task served as a focal abstraction task, because Henderson and Trope used it to study the effects of thinking more abstractly about negotiation issues on negotiation behavior.

In another modification created by Henderson (2013), participants are presented with several item pairs related to different objects (e.g., newspaper). Each item pair consists of one item that refers to a category to which the object belongs (reading material) and one item that refers to an example of the object (the New York Times). Participants are instructed to select (via a check box) the item in each pair that refers to the category or the item that refers to the example. This task has been used only to study the effects of abstraction on people’s attraction to different sized choice-sets. A key advantage of this modified task is that it holds information exposure constant between conditions.

Traits versus examples

In a word search, participants search for prototypical traits (more abstract; e.g., natural, juicy, fresh, raw) or examples (more concrete; e.g., pineapple, apple, pear, banana, strawberry) of a category (e.g., fruit; Malkoc et al., 2010). This task has been used only to study the effects of abstraction on decision making. Rather than inducing a more concrete or abstract mindset, Burgoon, Henderson, and Wakslak (2013) modified the traits-versus-examples task to elicit more or less abstract thinking about politicians. Specifically, in their task, participants read a series of word pairs related to the category of politicians. Each word pair consists of a trait that is associated with the category (e.g., knowledgeable, persuasive) and an example that belongs to the category (John McCain, Barack Obama). Participants are instructed to identify the options that refer to the traits or identify the options that refer to the examples. This task served as a focal-abstraction task, because Burgoon and her colleagues used the task to study the effects of abstraction on evaluations of politicians.

Like the modified categories-versus-examples task (Henderson, 2013), the modified traits-versus-examples task holds information exposure constant, ruling out any confounds associated with participants’ idiosyncratic responses. Whereas the mindset task used by Malkoc et al. (2010) is particularly useful for paper-pencil tasks, the focal abstraction task used by Burgoon et al. (2013) is particularly useful for online data collection, where circling in a word-search task is not feasible.

Nonobservable versus observable characteristics

As noted earlier, many of the tasks in this abstraction-of-objects section force people to consider similarities (more abstract) or differences (more concrete) between things. People can search for similarities by comparing characteristics that are nonobservable (e.g., value of a thing, attitudes about a thing) or observable (e.g., the dimensions of a thing, specific facts about a thing. Because nonobservable characteristics are invariant across a broader range of things than are observable characteristics, nonobservable characteristics are by definition more abstract (Medin & Ortony, 1989). The following two tasks offer different ways of inducing people to focus on nonobservable versus observable characteristics.

Nonalignable versus alignable comparisons

In consumer choice, purchasing decisions can result from comparing product options that have alignable or nonalignable features. Alignable features refer to shared attributes for which each option has a unique instantiation, whereas nonalignable features refer to attributes that are unique to individual options and thus are not directly comparable with attributes of other options (Markman & Gentner, 1993; Zhang & Markman, 2001). For instance, people can directly compare differences in screen size, battery life, and weight of two laptop computers, but making those comparisons between a laptop and a desktop computer is not informative. Because evaluating directly comparable options requires attention to specific differences in the features that are common to all options (e.g., laptop A weighs 4 pounds, but laptop B weights 3.2 pounds), doing so elicits more concrete thinking. However, as options become less directly comparable, people must evaluate options along more abstract dimensions that are less readily observable, such as the value, function, and necessity of each option (Johnson, 1984).

In the manipulation developed by Malkoc et al. (2010), participants evaluate consumer products that have either alignable or nonalignable features. In the alignable comparison (more concrete) condition, participants indicate their preference for one of two products (e.g., digital camera X and digital camera Y) that have differences in their shared features (e.g., size, battery life, resolution, optical zoom, interchangeable lens). In the nonalignable comparison (more abstract) condition, participants indicate their preference for one of two products (e.g., digital camera and smartphone) that do not have shared features (e.g., a digital camera has shutter speed, manual settings for different environments, whereas a smartphone has a variety of applications such as e-mail, phone call, and text message; Malkoc et al., 2010, p. 125). This task has been used to study the effects of abstraction on decision making (see also Wakslak & Trope, 2009).

Abstract versus concrete self-thought

Updegraff and Suh (2007) created a focal-abstraction task rather than a mindset task to directly manipulate the degree to which people think about themselves abstractly. For this task, neutral images are paired with either more abstract or more concrete self-thoughts. For each of the 10 images presented, participants write down a short self-thought elicited by the image. In the more concrete condition, participants are instructed to focus on very concrete facts about themselves or very specific events in their lives. In the more abstract condition, participants are instructed to focus on any idea, attitude, or opinion they might have regarding themselves or their lives as a whole. As a manipulation check, participants complete the sentence stem “Something that makes me feel good is…” with a limit of 10 words. Trained coders then rate the level of abstraction of each response on a scale of 1 (extremely specific/concrete) to 7 (extremely general/abstract; see Updegraff, Emanuel, Suh, & Gallagher, 2009, for a daily questionnaire adaptation of the task). This focal abstraction task has been used only to measure the effect of abstraction on life satisfaction (Updegraff et al., 2009; Updegraff & Suh, 2007).

In an alternative version, independent raters code open-ended self-thoughts on a continuum; a more concrete thought is defined as “a concrete experience or event, something that a person clearly can have or not have, or something that states clear and objective criteria” and a more abstract thought is defined as “one that focuses on broad descriptions and is vague, undefined, or could be judged flexibly by the participant” (Updegraff et al., 2009, p. 100).² This task was also used to study the effect of abstraction on life satisfaction.

Measures

Atypical examples

In a categorization task, participants indicate on a Likert-type scale the degree to which different examples belong to the category (Isen & Daubman, 1984). The examples vary in their representativeness of the category; participants are presented with three strong, three moderately strong, and three weak examples. For example, sofa, desk, and fan are strong, moderately strong, and weak examples, respectively, of the category of furniture. Higher ratings of the weak examples’ belongingness in the category indicate more abstract thinking. This abstraction measure has been used to assess the effect of positive affect (Isen & Daubman, 1984) and increased psychological distance (Smith & Trope, 2006; Wakslak & Trope, 2009) on abstraction.

Words versus pictures

Pictures are inherently more concrete because they are specific, vivid, detailed, and have observable features. Words, on the other hand, are more abstract because they represent a wider range of things than a single picture. Indeed, viewing a picture may attune people to incidental characteristics of a thing, whereas imagining the thing that a word represents attunes people to the invariant central characteristics of that thing. In the task developed by Amit, Algom, and Trope (2009), participants view stimulus items on a computer. On half of the trials, a single word appears (e.g., soccerball), and on the other half, a single picture appears (e.g., an image of a soccer ball). Participants are instructed to classify the presented item as one of two objects (e.g., press one computer key if the item is a soccer ball and another key if the item is an American football). People are considered to be thinking more abstractly (i.e., less concretely) if they identify items presented as words more quickly than items presented as pictures. More recently, Amit, Wakslak, and Trope (2012) adapted the task to have participants indicate their preference for communicating information to others in words versus pictures. By allowing participants to select a preference for information, the adapted version of the task is more flexible across data-collection media. Both sets of authors used the task to measure abstraction as a function of psychological distance.

Manipulations and measures

Broad versus narrow categorization

Categorizing things on the basis of invariant central characteristics results in broader, more inclusive categories. Therefore, when used as a measure, the generation of a fewer number of categories is indicative of more abstract thinking. In one version of the task, participants are given a set of stimuli (e.g., a set of 14 color chips) and are asked to sort the colors into as many or as few categories as they see fit (Isen & Daubman, 1984). In another version, participants imagine several events (e.g., camping, moving out, a yard sale, a visit to New York City) and are given lists of objects associated with each event to sort into categories (e.g., tent, sleeping bag, and lantern for the camping event; Liberman, Sagristano, & Trope, 2002). In both versions, researchers count the number of categories created. In yet another version, participants sort a list of shopping items into as many categories as they deem appropriate (Lee & Ariely, 2006). In this version, independent raters code the category labels for breadth. This task has been used in previous research to measure abstraction as a function of positive affect (Isen & Daubman, 1984), increased psychological distance (Liberman et al., 2002), and decreased duration of shopping (Lee & Ariely, 2006).

In a manipulation developed by Ülkümen, Chakravarti, and Morwitz (2010), participants imagine shopping for a party. Eight categories of products are presented to participants (e.g., wine, cheese, beer, music). Within each global category, products are categorized into either a few broad categories (more abstract) or many narrow categories (more concrete). For example, 24 wines are categorized into two broad categories (e.g., red or white) or into twelve narrow categories (e.g., Italian red, Italian white, French red, French white). This task was used to study the effect of abstraction on consumer decision making.

Abstraction of actions

Research inspired by the abstraction of actions is grounded in theories of goal hierarchies, which argue that goals are invariant central organizing structures that play a vital role in interpreting and predicting people’s actions across contexts (Austin & Vancouver, 1996; Chulef, Read, & Walsh, 2001). Accordingly, goals serve as an explanation for individual differences in personality (Emmons, 1986) and convey overarching meaning to sets of actions that either occur within a context or across disparate contexts. Indeed, any action can be represented more abstractly in terms of overarching end states (i.e., why the action happens) or more concretely in terms of specific means (i.e., how the action happens) (Bower, Black, & Turner, 1979; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987, 1989). Likewise, any action can be represented more abstractly in terms of global personality traits that are implied by the action or more concretely in terms of situation-specific states (e.g., Funder, 1991; Heider, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965; Trope, 1986, 1989).

Manipulations

Past-event priming

Intended as a manipulation of vividness, Strack et al. (1985) developed one of the first why-versus-how tasks. In this manipulation, participants think of a past life event (e.g., eating breakfast) and describe why (more abstract) or how (more concrete) it occurred. Whereas participants in the why condition are explicitly told that the researchers are not interested in how the event came about, participants in the how condition are told that the researchers are not interested in why the event happened. To control for length, participants are limited to three why or how statements, and each of these statements is restricted to a number of lines, words, or characters. As a manipulation check, participants indicate how they went about describing the event on a scale of 0 to 9 (0 = by searching for causes and reasons, 9 = imagining the course of events concretely and vividly). Strack and his colleagues used this task to study the effects of past-event priming on changes in subjective well-being.

Goal priming

Focusing on why to achieve a goal elicits thoughts about the broad impact of achieving that goal. Focusing on how to achieve a goal elicits thoughts about the specific steps that are necessary for achieving that goal. In why/how goal priming (Freitas et al., 2004), participants describe goals at progressively more abstract or concrete levels. In both the why and how conditions, a goal chosen by either the experimenters or the participants is presented in a text box. In the why (more abstract) condition, participants then explain in a second text box why they might want to accomplish that goal. Next, participants explain, in a third text box, why they might accomplish what they entered in the second text box. The process continues for three subsequent responses. In the how (more concrete) condition, participants explain, in a second text box, the specific steps they might take to accomplish that goal. Next, participants enter, in a third text box, the specific steps they might take to accomplish what they entered in the second text box. The process continues for three subsequent responses.

In an alternative version of this task, participants list why or how statements for three different activities (Alter, Oppenheimer, & Zemla, 2010; Henderson, 2013).

Although the manipulation was originally used to study the effects of abstraction on self-regulation (e.g., Freitas et al., 2004; Fujita, Trope, et al., 2006; also see Schmeichel et al., 2011), it has since been used to study a wide variety of cognitive and social constructs, including judgment and decision making (e.g., Choi & Fishbach, 2011; Henderson, 2013; Wakslak & Trope, 2009; Wright et al., 2012; Yan & Sengupta, 2011), attitudes (Critcher & Ferguson, 2011; Ledgerwood et al., 2010), negotiation outcomes (Giacomantonio et al., 2010), and self-esteem (e.g., Vess et al., 2011).

In a modification created by Henderson (2011), rather than activating a more abstract mindset, participants generate reasons why they want to achieve a particular outcome in a negotiation. This task served as a focal abstraction task, because Henderson used the task to study how thinking more abstractly about negotiation issues affected negotiation behavior.

Traits versus behaviors

Participants read a list of actions that people might consider doing (Liberman et al., 2007). After each action, participants specify either which personality traits are implied by that action (more abstract) or which objects they would use to complete that action (more concrete). In a slight adaptation, all participants generate their own lists of 10 actions, and those in the concrete condition also list the means by which they would complete the action (McCrea, Liberman, Trope, & Sherman, 2008). This manipulation has been used to study the effects of abstraction on perceptions of psychological distance (Liberman et al., 2007) and self-regulation (McCrea et al., 2008).

Two sets of researchers created focal traits-versus-behaviors tasks to directly manipulate how abstractly people think about others (Goodman et al., 2009; ter Doest, Semin, & Sherman, 2002). In one task, participants read descriptions of the personalities (more abstract) or behaviors (more concrete) of 24 people (Goodman et al., 2009). Descriptions are presented one at a time on a computer screen, ostensibly so that participants can carefully study each description individually. Next, participants write down descriptions of each person ostensibly to pass on to another participant. Goodman and his colleagues are the only researchers who have used this task. They demonstrated that abstraction increases communication of stereotypical information to others.

In another focal traits-versus-behaviors task (ter Doest et al., 2002) participants read descriptions of the personalities (more abstract) or behaviors (more concrete) of two target people. Participants then recall as much as they can about the targets and rate their impressions of the targets. ter Doest and her colleagues are the only researchers who have used this task. They demonstrated that abstraction decreases memory recall and increases stereotype-consistent impressions of others. Given that the manipulation and outcome measures in each of the focal traits-versus-means tasks were related to person descriptions, the effectiveness of either task for studying other constructs remains an open question.

Implications of an event on society versus a single individual

Any event can be thought of in terms of how it affects society as a whole or a specific person. Thinking about the effect of an event across many people requires attention to invariant central characteristics of that event; however, thinking about how an event affects a single person may draw attention to idiosyncratic features of the event. For example, thinking about how the Affordable Care Act affects society as a whole draws attention to broader concerns (e.g., taxes, sustainability of Medicaid), whereas thinking about how the policy affects an elderly parent draws attention to how it will affect his or her specific health care needs (e.g., special diet, cost of prescriptions).

In a task created by Malkoc et al. (2010), participants write about how a specific event (e.g., the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) would affect society as a whole or a specific person, such as a friend. Independent raters code participant responses as a manipulation check by using scoring criteria from the linguistic category model (Semin & Fiedler, 1988; see Linguistic category model section). This manipulation has been used only to explore the effect of abstraction on judgment and decision making (Malkoc et al., 2010), and the adaptability of this manipulation for studying other constructs remains an open question.

Measures

Segmentation of experiences

Recall that invariant characteristics may be the overarching meaning behind a set of actions that occur within a context. Thus, one can interpret an experience by conceptualizing its overarching purpose (more abstract) or by attending to discrete actions within the experience (more concrete). One way that perceivers do this is by segmenting incoming information about an experience into meaningful units or “chunks” (Newtson, 1973). Though tasks that require participants to segment experiences have been widely used throughout psychology, only recently has such a task been used to measure abstraction. That is, creating fewer, broader chunks of an experience is thought to indicate a higher level of abstraction (e.g., Henderson et al., 2006; Wakslak, Trope, Liberman, & Alony, 2006). In a segmentation task used by Henderson et al. (2006) and Wakslak et al., (2006), participants watch a silent film (e.g., two moving triangles and a circle that are said to depict people on a camping trip). While watching the film, participants press a button when they judge a meaningful action to have occurred.

This task has been used only to measure abstraction as a function of psychological distance (Henderson et al., 2006, Wakslak et al., 2006) and causal uncertainty (Helzer & Edwards, 2012). However, because any film could be used by researchers, we believe this task could be flexibly adapted to measure abstraction as a function of multiple constructs. Further, it could be adapted into a manipulation by asking participants to create the fewest segments (more abstract) or most segments (more concrete) that they see fit.

Linguistic category model

Any action can be thought about more concretely in terms of the situation in which the action occurs or more abstractly in terms of personality traits that are indicative of how a person behaves across contexts. Four linguistic categories can be used to classify actions at increasing levels of abstraction: descriptive action verbs that describe a specific behavior from beginning to end (e.g., talk, walk, visit), interpretive action verbs that describe a behavior that can be interpreted differently across situations (e.g., help, encourage, mislead), state verbs that describe mental states of another person (e.g., love, hate, trust), and adjectives that classify people in relation to others (e.g., friendly, bashful, respectful; Semin & Fiedler, 1988). This framework can be used to score generated text for the degree of abstraction (Semin & Fiedler, 1989; see also Fujita, Henderson, Eng, Trope, & Liberman, 2006; Klein et al., 2010).

As an alternative measure, four sentences can be constructed by using predicates corresponding to the four levels of abstraction. Participants then choose which of the four sentences describes a scene or person best (e.g., Maass, Ceccarelli, & Rudin, 1996). The linguistic category model has been used to validate the abstractness of a constructed text measure (see section on Constructed text; Clark & Semin, 2008) and as a manipulation check (e.g., Malkoc et al., 2010). It has also been used to study the abstractness of written responses as a function of self-regulation strategies (e.g., Semin, Higgins, de Montes, Estourget, & Valencia, 2005), room temperature (IJzerman & Semin, 2009), psychological distance (e.g., Fujita, Henderson, et al., 2006), and self-esteem protection (Maass, 1999; Maass et al., 1989).

Although the linguistic category model is a popular measure of abstraction, there is some controversy regarding the parts of speech that should be included in the model. Although nouns were initially excluded from Semin and Fiedler’s (1988) model, Carnaghi et al. (2008) have called for nouns to be included and recognized as the most abstract linguistic marker. It is noteworthy that Carnagi et al. focus exclusively on nouns that describe people. Research from other camps suggests that the usage of other types of nouns in communication might actually indicate that people are thinking at an extremely concrete level (Gentner & Kurtz, 2005). Indeed, some nouns can certainly describe abstract relationships (e.g., brother, predator), whereas other nouns can describe things with specific properties (e.g., table, chair, basketball). The role that verbs play in abstraction is also up for debate. Specifically, Gentner and Kurtz (2005) propose that verbs can be quite abstract when they serve as category labels for external relationships among things (e.g., visit, play, give); however, according to Semin and Fielder (1988, 1989), such verbs should be treated as concrete parts of speech. We look forward to future research that provides some clarity on these issues.

Constructed text

Whereas other why/how tasks instruct participants to state why or how something happens, Clark and Semin (2008) measured more abstract versus concrete thinking as a function of the level of shared knowledge between communicators. Participants indicate their preference for one of two constructed texts: one that focuses on the reasons behind a vacation (more abstract) or one that focuses on specific details involved in making a vacation happen (more concrete). The abstraction level of each text was verified in a pilot study by using the linguistic category model (Semin & Fiedler, 1988). Though the constructed text was used to measure the effect of psychological distance on preference for more abstract or more concrete communication, it could easily be adapted into a manipulation in which participants are presented with either the more abstract or more concrete text.

Rating of life event

As noted earlier, abstraction is the process of identifying invariant central characteristics of a thing. Therefore, any life event can be thought about more abstractly in terms of central characteristics, such as its importance and meaningfulness. Burrus and Roese (2006) developed a self-report measure of abstraction in which participants rate a life event (on a scale of −5 to 5) for dimensions of meaningful to meaningless, important to not important, big picture to small picture, high priority to low priority, simple to complicated, focus on why something gets done to focus on how something gets done, long-term goal to short-term goal, influences overall path of life to influences minor detours in life, and central to life as a whole to side issue for life as a whole. Items are summed to create a total abstraction score. The task was created to demonstrate that abstraction mediates the relationship between temporal distance and attributions of fate to past events. The task has also been used as a manipulation check for a temporal distance manipulation of abstraction (Giacomantonio et al., 2010).

Manipulations and measures

Behavior identification form

Although the Behavior Identification Form (Vallacher & Wegner, 1989) was originally developed to measure individual differences in how people habitually think about behaviors, it can also measure situational changes in abstraction. The form identifies 25 actions (e.g., making a list) along with two ways that the behavior might be identified (e.g., the more abstract description for making a list is getting organized, whereas the more concrete description is writing things down). Participants select the identification they personally believe best describes the behavior. An abstraction score is calculated by counting the number of higher-level actions identified by participants. A shorter alternative measure is the global-concerns scale (Fujita, Trope, et al., 2006). The same instructions and scoring system apply for 8 instead of 25 actions. More recently, modified versions of the behavior identification form have been created that ask people to indicate the manner in which they think about others (e.g., politicians) performing behaviors (see Burgoon et al., 2013). These modified versions are shorter than the original behavior identification form.

It is noteworthy that the behavior identification form has been used to study the relationship between abstraction and psychological distance (e.g., Fujita, Henderson, et al., 2006; Libby, Shaeffer, & Eibach, 2009; Liberman & Trope, 1998), decision making (e.g., Polman, 2012), social judgment (e.g., Luguri et al., 2012), and affect (e.g., E. R. Watkins, Moberly, & Moulds, 2011). In addition, the task has been used as a validation measure for several abstraction manipulations (e.g., Freitas et al., 2004; Fujita & Roberts, 2010; Fujita, Trope, et al., 2006; Lammers, 2012; Malkoc et al., 2010).

The behavior identification form has recently been adapted from a measure into a manipulation (Critcher & Ferguson, 2011). Participants first examine a list of 25 behaviors. Second, participants mentally reframe each behavior in more abstract or concrete terms. Keeping their own reframe in mind, participants then read either a more abstract or more concrete description for each behavior taken from the behavior identification form. Finally, participants indicate, using a scale of 1 (not at all) to 5 (perfectly), how well the description they just read reflects why or how each behavior is done. Critcher and Ferguson used the task to study the effect of abstraction on attraction to affectively valenced information.

Methodological Notes on Use of Abstraction Tasks

Given the variety of abstraction manipulations and measures available, researchers may wonder whether these methods are interchangeable. In this final section, we discuss important considerations researchers should consider when selecting the most appropriate method for their research questions. First, we note potential pros and cons of the use of a mindset task rather than a focal-abstraction task. Second, we discuss construct validity, or the ways researchers can increase confidence that their studies tap into abstraction more generally rather than abstraction operationally defined by a specific task.

Mindset versus focal task

Although the majority of manipulations deal with abstraction as a mindset, some tasks specifically deal with abstraction of a focal thing (Goodman et al., 2009; ter Doest et al., 2002; Updegraff et al., 2009; Updegraff & Suh, 2007). In addition, some mindset tasks have been modified so that researchers could manipulate how abstractly people thought about a particular thing (Burgoon et al., 2013; Henderson, 2011; Henderson & Trope, 2009). A natural question for researchers is whether they should choose a mindset or focal task for their studies. On the one hand, because the content of mindset tasks are unrelated to the dependent variable, there is a lower risk of experimenter-demand effects (i.e., false positives) than with focal tasks. On the other hand, mindset tasks assume that abstraction cued by one task transfers to a subsequent unrelated judgment, decision, or behavior. As a result, mindset tasks risk false negatives. That is, an effect might reliably emerge by using a focal abstraction task but not as reliably with a mindset task, because the abstraction process fails to transfer over.

Construct validity

One aim of the current article is to highlight the diversity of methods that are used for studying abstraction so that researchers can find tasks that are most adaptable to their research design and can have greater confidence that they are tapping into the underlying construct of interest (i.e., abstraction more generally rather than just abstraction operationally defined by a specific task). We highlight two ways researchers can increase their confidence that they are tapping into abstraction.

One way that researchers can have greater confidence that their effects are not artifacts of a particular task is to demonstrate their effects with more than one task. For example, Fujita, Trope, et al. (2006) demonstrated the effect of abstraction on self-control with goal priming and categories versus examples. Likewise, McCrea et al. (2012) demonstrated the effect of abstraction on self- and other stereotyping by using goal priming and Gestalt/WISC picture completion. We argue that overreliance on certain tasks can potentially undermine researchers’ confidence that they are tapping into abstraction. Accordingly, we calculated the number of studies in which a task was used to manipulate or measure abstraction (see Table 2). It is apparent that most researchers have relied on only a handful of manipulations and measures. For example, there is abundant evidence that thinking about why or how to achieve a goal (goal priming) influences a variety of dependent variables, but it is unclear whether some of those effects are the result of abstraction more generally or are the product of something specific to goal priming. Thus, if researchers demonstrate their effects by using a wider variety of tasks, they can be more confident that their effects reflect abstraction more generally.

Another way researchers can have greater confidence that their studies tap into abstraction is by selecting tasks for which the construct has been validated. Although attempts have been made to validate constructs for some methods, they are more of an exception than a rule. For example, the linguistic category model (Semin & Fiedler, 1988) has been used to validate constructed text (Clark & Semin, 2008). In addition, some methods have been validated by using the behavior identification form (e.g., nonalignable versus alignable comparisons; Malkoc et al., 2010). Despite these attempts, most methods of abstraction still need to be validated through pilot studies or analysis of psychometric properties. We argue that validating existing manipulations and measures should be a top priority for future research.

Conclusion

William James once wrote, “As life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness” (1902, p. 149). Abstraction certainly shifts people’s system of thinking and consequently plays a key role in learning, judgment and decision making, and behavior. Despite the strong interest in this issue, the field has been virtually silent on the best methods for studying abstraction. In this article, we provided the first comprehensive review of existing empirical methods for studying levels of abstraction (see Table 2 for a summary guide). To ground our discussion of methods, we first provided a definition of abstraction and a brief history of how it has been studied across psychology. Within our review of empirical methods, we compared and contrasted manipulations and measures, and we highlighted strengths and weaknesses of various tasks. Finally, we offered several considerations researchers should take into account when selecting methods for their own research questions. We hope that this review promotes research across theoretical and applied domains that will refine and broaden our understanding of abstraction.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Gili Freedman, Bob Josephs, Paige Harden, Nira Liberman, Erika Patall, Bobbie Spellman, and several anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments on an earlier version of this article; James Pennebaker, Judee Burgoon, and Yaacov Trope for helpful discussions of ideas; and Teresa Gaytan and Polo Perez for assistance with manuscript preparation.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Funding

Marlone D. Henderson received financial support from the National Science Foundation (BCS-1023611) for the publication of this article.

Notes

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