“Subjective Likelihood and the Construal Level of Future Events: A Replication Study of Wakslak, Trope, Liberman, and 2006”, 2020-07-16 (; similar):
C. J. Wakslak, Y. Trope, N. Liberman, and R. 2006 examined the effect of manipulating the likelihood of future events on level of construal (ie. 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 1⁄4 psychological distances assumed to influence mental abstraction in similar ways (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 these findings for CLT and advise against treating likelihood as a psychological distance until further tests have established the relationship.
[Keywords: construal level theory, likelihood, hypotheticality, mental representation, replication]