Subjective likelihood and the construal level of future events: A replication study of Wakslak, Trope, Liberman, and Alony (2006).

Subjective likelihood and the construal level of future events: A replication study of Wakslak, Trope, Liberman, and Alony (2006). J Pers Soc Psychol. 2020 Jul 16;: Authors: Calderon S, Mac Giolla E, Ask K, Granhag PA Abstract C. J. Wakslak, Y. Trope, N. Liberman, and R. Alony (2006) examined the effect of manipulating the likelihood of future events on level of construal (i.e., mental abstraction). Over 7 experiments, they consistently found that subjectively unlikely (vs. likely) future events were more abstractly (vs. concretely) construed. This well-cited, but understudied finding has had a major influence on the construal level theory (CLT) literature: Likelihood is considered to be 1 of 4 psychological distances assumed to influence mental abstraction in similar ways (Trope & Liberman, 2010). Contrary to the original empirical findings, we present 2 close replication attempts (N = 115 and N = 120; the original studies had N = 20 and N = 34) that failed to find the effect of likelihood on construal level. Bayesian analyses provided diagnostic support for the absence of an effect. In light of the failed replications, we present a meta-analytic summary of the accumulated evidence on the effect. It suggests a strong trend of declining effect sizes as a function of larger samples. These results call into question the previous conclusion that likelihood has a reliable influence on construal level. We discuss the implications of t...
Source: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: J Pers Soc Psychol Source Type: research