Toward a deeper understanding of the ecological origins of distance construal ☆ Klaus Fiedler a, ⁎, Janis Jung a , Michaela Wänke b , Theodore Alexopoulos c , Laura de Molière d a University of Heidelberg, Germany b University of Mannheim, Germany c University Paris Descartes, France d University College London, UK HIGHLIGHTS • Ecological correlations may explain positive correlations between all four distance aspects. • Distinct linguistic terms trigger similar distance construals in many different judges. • Negative verbs solicit more distant construals than positive action verbs and state verbs. • Nouns related to powerful, uncontrollable targets solicit distant construals. • These findings highlight the role language in distance regulation. abstract article info Article history: Received 20 April 2014 Revised 11 November 2014 Available online 29 November 2014 Keywords: Construal-level theory Distance dimension Ecological correlation Implicit verb causality Valence power controllability In the present research we elaborate on an ecological account (Fiedler, Jung, Wänke & Alexopoulos, 2012) for the unitary distance dimension postulated in construal-level theory, highlighting linguistic influences on distance regulation. We first replicate that distinct action verbs solicit similarly distant or close episodes in many judges, producing strong positive correlations between ratings of four distance aspects (time, space, probability, personal distance). A primary semantic–pragmatic dimension that accounts for a large part of the verb impact is valence: Negative action verbs trigger more distant episodes than positive verbs. Experiment 1 rules out an alternative ex- planation in terms of participants' mood. Experiment 2 cross-validates the valence effect with a new sample of affective state verbs. Consistent with implicit verb causality, state verbs solicit more distant episodes than action verbs, suggesting lack of intentional control and power as another semantic–pragmatic dimension. Experiment 3 supports this interpretation using high- and low-power nouns. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction Construal-level theory (CLT; Trope & Liberman, 2003, 2010) relies on the basic assumption that different modalities of psychological distance — particularly, temporal, spatial, social, and factual (i.e., probability) distance — converge in one underlying dimension. A noteworthy implication of this strong assumption is that different dis- tance modalities are positively correlated (Maglio, Trope, & Liberman, 2013). What is temporally or factually distant (vs. close) also tends to be spatially or socially distant (vs. close). Support for this contention comes from more than a decade of rich empirical research on CLT (Trope & Liberman, 2003, 2010), showing that priming high versus low distance in one modality induces similarly high versus low distance in all other modalities. Fiedler, Jung, Wänke, and Alexopoulos (2012) have proposed an ecological account for the consistently positive correlations between such seemingly distinct conditions as time, space, probability, and social distance. They had actually started from a deliberate attempt to find compensatory relations or discounting effects (i.e., negative correlations such that high distance in one modality implies low distance in others). However, across several experiments that assessed ratings of an entire sample of imagined or memorized episodes on all four major distance aspects, they obtained amazingly strong positive correlations, both across participants and within participants across episodes. Moreover, positive correlations were not restricted to freely construed fictitious fu- ture episodes. Correlations were similarly positive when participants were asked to remember actually experienced episodes with fixed coor- dinates of all four distance aspects in the participants' biography. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 57 (2015) 78–86 ☆ Author note: The research underlying the present paper was supported by a Koselleck grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Fi 294/23-1). ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: klaus.fiedler@psychologie.uni-heidelberg.de (K. Fiedler). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.11.002 0022-1031/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Social Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp