Why Does Psychological Distance Influence Construal Level? The Role of Processing Mode: Table 1.
揭示了心理距离影响解释水平的中介变量——加工模式：近端事件更多依赖视觉加工导致具体表征，远端事件更多依赖言语加工导致抽象表征，并据此识别了该效应的边界条件和消费者偏好的反转条件。
The influence of psychological distance on construal level has been extensively documented in both social psychology and consumer research, with proximal (distal) events shown to induce low-level (high-level) construals. However, the extant literature takes a black box approach, as it were, to this effect by viewing it in terms of a direct association between distance and construal level, without specifying any intervening variables. The current research seeks to unpack this black box and provide more detailed process insights by identifying such an intervening variable: processing mode. We argue that people tend to rely more on visual processing when construing proximal events while engaging in a greater degree of verbal processing with regard to distal targets; in turn, visual processing is more likely to yield concrete (low-level) representations, whereas verbal processing facilitates abstract (high-level) representations. This unpacked formulation not only provides additional theoretical insight into a classic effect but also yields implications that are novel to the literature. In particular, emphasizing the role of processing mode (1) enables an identification of boundary conditions for the distance-construal effect, and (2) indicates when and why well-established consequences of psychological distance on consumer preferences can be reversed. Results from five studies provide convergent support for our key proposition and its corollaries.