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Construal level theory is a theory in social psychology that describes the relation between psychological distance and the extent to which people's thinking is abstract or concrete. The general idea is that the more distant an object is from the individual, the more abstract it will be thought of, while the closer the object is, the more concretely it will be thought of. In CLT, psychological distance is defined on several dimensions—temporal, spatial, social and hypothetical distance being considered most important, though there is some debate among social psychologists about further dimensions like informational, experiential or affective distance. The theory was developed by the Israeli social psychologists Nira Liberman and the American psychologist Yaacov Trope.
An example of construal level effects would be that although planning one's next summer vacation one year in advance will cause one to focus on broad, decontextualized features of the situation , the very same vacation planned to occur very soon will cause one to focus on specific features of the present situation.
According to construal level theory people perceive events that vary in several types of psychological distance:
Psychological distance affects the extent to which we think about an event, person, or idea as high or low level, and this will influence how concrete or abstract those thoughts are: