Emotional Appraisal, Psychological Distance and Construal Level: Implications for Cognitive Reappraisal

Publication Date

8-25-2023

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Emotion regulation, Emotional appraisal, Construal level, Psychological distance

Abstract

Construal-level theory emphasizes that representing events at greater spatial, temporal, social, or hypothetical distance results in processing information at high construal levels (more conceptual, abstract). We posit that psychological distance and construal level are somewhat separable constructs, and can have different effects on emotion, and therefore, emotion regulation. We argue that psychological distance influences emotional appraisal, such that increasing distance results in lower emotion intensity, which can be leveraged to down-regulate emotions. However, we consider construal level a mindset, which can occur with either high or low psychological distance. Furthermore, we argue that compared with psychological distance, construal level has a more nuanced relationship with emotion, and changing construal level for the purpose of changing emotion also requires considering the construal level of one's emotion-regulation goals.

Copyright Date

8-25-2023

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Rights Holder

Damon Abraham, John P. Powers, and Kateri McRae

Provenance

Received from author

Language

English (eng)

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the authors. Under exclusive license to Sage Publications. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Abraham, D., Powers, J. P., & McRae, K. (2023). Emotional appraisal, psychological distance and construal level: Implications for cognitive reappraisal. Emotion Review, 15(4), 313-331. https://doi.org/10.1177/17540739231196577

Publication Title

Emotion Review

Volume

15

First Page

313

Last Page

331

ISSN

1754-0747

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