Psychological distance in educational context
Abstract
The construal level theory is a broadly accepted theory in social psychology, investigated by many researchers in recent years. Today the theory provides a research frame for variety of topics from the marketing and customer behaviour to cognitive functions, coping strategies or morality (Moss, 2016). In the heart of the theory there is the understanding of the mechanisms of construing mental representations and how those representations influence our thinking together with a context. In the following article we present an introduction to the construal level theory and many studies applying the findings into various fields of the psychological research. The key terms are abstractness / concreteness and the relationship of this dimension to the construct of psychological distance. Abstract and concrete mental representations are an important topic for understanding difficulties in learning and processing a school curriculum. Therefore we understand the construal level theory as an important approach that is applicable in a pedagogical psychology research. We offer our own point of view of the application of this theory in education, namely in the attitude research and abstract knowledge processing.
(Fulltext in Czech)
Keywords
construal level theory, abstraction, concretenessLiterature
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