Department of Management and Organization, Marshall School of Business.
Department of Marketing, Marshall School of Business.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2015 Jun;144(3):522-7. doi: 10.1037/xge0000066. Epub 2015 Apr 27.
More and more we interact with other people across varying amounts of geographical distance. What shapes our categorization of a fixed amount of such distance as near or far? Building upon and expanding prior work on the association between spatial distance perception and reachability, we argue that people judge a given geographical distance as subjectively smaller when they can exert control across that distance. Studies 1-4 demonstrate this effect of control on spatial distance judgment in disparate contexts, including political, work, and family domains, and explore implications of such judgments for the downstream judgment of travel time to a location (Study 2). We do not find that one's desire for control moderates these effects (Study 4). Supporting a cognitive association argument, we find evidence that the association between control and distance is bidirectional, with subjective distance influencing perceived controllability (Study 5). Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
我们越来越多地与不同地理距离的人进行互动。那么，是什么因素影响了我们对固定距离的远近分类呢？在先前关于空间距离感知与可达性之间关系的研究基础上，我们认为当人们能够跨越给定的地理距离进行控制时，他们会主观地认为这段距离更近。研究 1-4 在不同的背景下，包括政治、工作和家庭领域，证明了控制对空间距离判断的影响，并探讨了这些判断对到一个地点的旅行时间的下游判断的影响（研究 2）。我们没有发现一个人对控制的渴望会调节这些影响（研究 4）。支持认知关联论点，我们发现了控制和距离之间的关联是双向的，主观距离会影响可感知的可控性（研究 5）。这些发现的理论和实际意义将在文中讨论。
