ABSTRACT—People construe the world along a continuum from concretely (focusing on specific, local details) to abstractly (focusing on global essences). We show that people are more likely to interpret the world abstractly when they experience cognitive disfluency, or difficulty processing stimuli in the environment, than when they experience cognitive fluency. We observed this effect using three instantiations of fluency: visual perceptual fluency (Study 1b), conceptual priming fluency (Study 2b), and linguistic fluency (Study 3). Adopting the framework of construal theory, we suggest that one mechanism for this effect is perceivers ’ tendency to interpret disfluently processed stimuli as farther from their current position than fluently processed stimuli (Studies 1a and 2a). Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play of 29,551 words about a fictitious Prince of Denmark. It is also a tragic tale of revenge and existential angst. Although both descriptions are accurate, they constitute fundamentally different representations of the play. Distinct cognitive and behavioral consequences might arise depending on whether a person construes the play in the concrete terms of the first description or the more abstract terms of the second description. Numerous factors appear to determine whether people represent a stimulus concretely or abstractly. One such factor is the Address correspondence to Adam Alter, Psychology Department, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544,

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What is the difference between far and further? Investigations into such psychological distancing – removal from an egocentric reference point – have suggested similarities between geographical space, time, probability, and social distance. We draw on these similarities to propose that experiencing any kind of distance will reduce sensitivity to any other distance. Ten studies varied the initial distance of an event and assessed sensitivity to a second distance. Consistently, people were less responsive to a given span of distance when it was distal versus proximal. This effect held using each of the four distances as the initial instantiation of distance; it also held using each dimension to assess sensitivity to distance (i.e., as the secondary distance dimension). These findings suggest that the dimensions of psychological distance share a common, interchangeable meaning and that the cross-dimension difference between far and further is less than that between near and far.

Foremost, I am grateful for the excellent guidance I have received from my supervisor Professor Karl Halvor Teigen. His academic capacities and ability to come up with innovative ideas have been indispensable resources to my work’s progress. His genuine passion for research and “open door ” policy have helped me to pull through setbacks and frustrations and kept me inspired till the end. I am also grateful to my co-supervisor Professor Magne Jørgensen who hired me as a PhD student at Simula Research Laboratory four years ago, and gave me the academic freedom to pursue my own ideas. Without his enthusiasm for psychological research and wide array of interests, this research could never have taken place. I have been fortunate enough to have been surrounded by several talented young researchers during the past years. I would like to thank my colleagues Ines, Silje, Torleif, Kristin, Andreas, Petra, and Salman for all the lunch breaks, laughs, and stimulating discussions. Finally, thanks to my friends Kjetil, Henrik, Olav, Anders, Christer, and Kjell who have patiently put up with my “obsession ” with the thesis. 3