Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Is either peripheral detail(s) or central feature(s) easy to mentally process?: EEG examination of mental workload based on construal level theory

  • Published:
Current Psychology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The same phenomenon or action may evoke different imaginations across the minds of people. For instance, locking the door could be construed either as putting the key into the lock or as securing the house. According to the construal level theory, the former (latter) is more likely to happen among people with a low (high) level of construal, who have an intrinsic inclination to focus on peripheral details (central features) of the phenomena or action. Given that object’s peripheral details are more concrete and less abstract than its central features, people with a low (high) level of construal have better developed concrete-mindset (abstract-mindset). Previous research has been consistently assuming that people with a low (high) level of construal are better at cognitively processing the concrete (abstract) phenomenon or action. However, this assumption has not yet been empirically tested with EEG methodology. In this paper, we test this assumption through within-subject experimental design (n = 44) conducting EEG methodology. Results of the P-300 component of the event-related brain potential, which is an indicator of mental workload, demonstrated that people with a low (high) level of construal experienced a greater mental workload when they were processing abstract (concrete) phenomena.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. Our pilot test based on 250 undergraduate students revealed that those abstract words are perceived more abstract than those concrete words (toverall = 5.21, poverall < .01), whereas those concrete words are perceived more concrete than those abstract words (toverall = 4.57, poverall < .01).

  2. The term of confounding effect refers to an alternative explanation for our causal inference.

References

  • Allison, B. Z., & Polich, J. (2008). Workload assessment of computer gaming using a single-stimulus event-related potential paradigm. Biological Psychology, 77(3), 277–283.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Alter, A. L., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2009). Suppressing secrecy through metacognitive ease: Cognitive fluency encourages self-disclosure. Psychological Science, 20(11), 1414–1420.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bar-Anan, Y., Liberman, N., Trope, Y., & Algom, D. (2007). Automatic processing of psychological distance: Evidence from a Stroop task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(4), 610–622.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carter, A. B., Bobocel, D. R., & Brockner, J. (2019). When to explain why or how it happened: Tailoring accounts to fit observers’ construal level. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 26(1), 158–170.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Courchesne, E., Hillyard, S. A., & Galambos, R. (1975). Stimulus novelty, task relevance and the visual evoked potential in man. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 39(2), 131–143.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cuthbert, B. N., Schupp, H. T., Bradley, M. M., Birbaumer, N., & Lang, P. J. (2000). Brain potentials in affective picture processing: Covariation with autonomic arousal and affective report. Biological Psychology, 52(2), 95–111.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Delorme, A., & Makeig, S. (2004). EEGLAB: An open source toolbox for analysis of single-trial EEG dynamics ıncluding ındependent component analysis. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 134(1), 9–21.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dickson, D. S., Cerda, V. R., Beavers, R. N., Ruiz, A., Castañeda, R., & Wicha, N. Y. (2018). When 2×4 is meaningful: The N400 and P300 reveal operand format effects in multiplication verification. Psychophysiology, 55(11), 1–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ding, Y., & Keh, H. T. (2017). Consumer reliance on intangible versus tangible attributes in service evaluation: The role of construal level. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(6), 848–865.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eyal, T., Sagristano, M. D., Trope, Y., Liberman, N., & Chaiken, S. (2009). When values matter: Expressing values in behavioral intentions for the near vs. distant future. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(1), 35–43.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Friedman, D., Cycowicz, Y. M., & Gaeta, H. (2001). The novelty P3: An event-related brain potential (ERP) sign of the brain's evaluation of novelty. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 25(4), 355–373.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fujita, K., & Carnevale, J. J. (2012). Transcending temptation through abstraction: The role of construal level in self-control. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(4), 248–252.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fujita, K., & Han, H. A. (2009). Moving beyond deliberative control of impulses: The effect of construal levels on evaluative associations in self-control conflicts. Psychological Science, 20(7), 799–804.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fujita, K., Trope, Y., Liberman, N., & Levin-Sagi, M. (2006). Construal levels and self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(3), 351–367.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Gevins, A., & Smith, M. E. (2003). Neurophysiological measures of cognitive workload during human-computer ınteraction. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 4(1–2), 113–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gokcay, A., Celebisoy, N., Gokcay, F., & Atac, C. (2006). Cognitive functions evaluated by P300 and visual and auditory number assays in children with childhood epilepsy with occipital paroxysms (CEOP). Seizure, 15(1), 22–27.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Goldstein, A., Spencer, K. M., & Donchin, E. (2002). The influence of stimulus deviance and novelty on the P300 and novelty P3. Psychophysiology, 39(6), 781–790.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gray, H. M., Ambady, N., Lowenthal, W. T., & Deldin, P. (2004). P300 as an index of attention to self-relevant stimuli. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(2), 216–224.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guastello, S. J. (2016). Cognitive workload and fatigue in financial decision making. Tokyo: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hajcak, G., MacNamara, A., & Olvet, D. M. (2010). Event-related potentials, emotion, and emotion regulation: An integrative review. Developmental Neuropsychology, 35(2), 129–155.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, J. (2019). Construal level and cross-sensory influences: High-level construal increases the effect of color on drink perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(5), 890–904.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Isreal, J. B., Chesney, G. L., Wickens, C. D., & Donchin, E. (1980). P300 and tracking difficulty: Evidence for multiple resources in dual-task performance. Psychophysiology, 17(3), 259–273.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Jung, T. P., Makeig, S., Westerfield, M., Townsend, J., Courchesne, E., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2001). Analysis and visualization of single trial event related potentials. Human Brain Mapping, 14(3), 166–185.

  • Kathner, I., Wriessnegger, S. C., Müller-Putz, G. R., Kübler, A., & Halder, S. (2014). Effects of mental workload and fatigue on the P300, alpha and Theta band power during operation of an ERP (P300) brain–computer interface. Biological Psychology, 102, 118–129.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kivetz, Y., & Tyler, T. R. (2007). Tomorrow I’ll be me: The effect of time perspective on the activation of ıdealistic versus pragmatic selves. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 102(2), 193–211.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kok, A. (2001). On the utility of P3 amplitude as a measure of processing capacity. Psychophysiology, 38(3), 557–577.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lammers, J. (2012). Abstraction increases hypocrisy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(2), 475–480.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luck, S. J. (2014). An introduction to the event-related potential technique. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • MacGregor, K. E., Carnevale, J. J., Dusthimer, N. E., & Fujita, K. (2017). Knowledge of the self-control benefits of high-level versus low-level construal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(4), 607–620.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mak, J. N., McFarland, D. J., Vaughan, T. M., McCane, L. M., Tsui, P. Z., Zeitlin, D. J., Sellers, E. W., & Wolpaw, J. R. (2012). EEG correlates of P300-based brain–computer interface (BCI) performance in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Journal of Neural Engineering, 9(2), 026014.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mochizuki-Kawai, H., Tsukiura, T., Mochizuki, S., & Kawamura, M. (2006). Learning-related changes of brain activation in the visual ventral stream: An fMRI study of mirror reading skill. Brain Research, 1122(1), 154–160.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nidal, K., & Malik, A. S. (2014). EEG/ERP analysis: Methods and applications. New York, NY: CRC Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Orne, M. T. (1962). On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications. American psychologist, 17(11), 776.

  • Palomba, D., Angrilli, A., & Mini, A. (1997). Visual evoked potentials, heart rate responses and memory to emotional pictorial stimuli. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 27(1), 55–67.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Peng, W., Hu, L., Zhang, Z., & Hu, Y. (2012). Causality in the association between P300 and alpha event-related desynchronization. PLoS One, 7(4).

  • Polich, J. (2007). Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b. Clinical Neurophysiology, 118(10), 2128–2148.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Pozharliev, R., Verbeke, W. J., Van Strien, J. W., & Bagozzi, R. P. (2015). Merely being with you increases my attention to luxury products: Using EEG to understand consumers' emotional experience with luxury branded products. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(4), 546–558.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reyt, J. N., Wiesenfeld, B. M., & Trope, Y. (2016). Big picture is better: The social implications of construal level for advice taking. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 135, 22–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rim, S., Uleman, J. S., & Trope, Y. (2009). Spontaneous trait inference and construal level theory: Psychological distance increases nonconscious trait thinking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 1088–1097.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Sauseng, P., & Klimesch, W. (2008). What does phase information of oscillatory brain activity tell us about cognitive processes? Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 32(5), 1001–1013.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, E. P., Rietschel, J. C., Hendershot, B. D., Pruziner, A. L., Miller, M. W., Hatfield, B. D., & Gentili, R. J. (2018). Measurement of attentional reserve and mental effort for cognitive workload assessment under various task demands during dual-task walking. Biological Psychology, 134, 39–51.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Slepian, M. L., Masicampo, E. J., & Ambady, N. (2015). Cognition from on high and down low: Verticality and construal level. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(1), 1–17.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Soltani, M., & Knight, R. T. (2000). Neural origins of the P300. Critical Reviews in Neurobiology, 14(3–4), 20–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2003). Temporal construal. Psychological Review, 110(3), 403–421.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117(2), 440–463.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Trope, Y., Liberman, N., & Wakslak, C. (2007). Construal levels and psychological distance: Effects on representation, prediction, evaluation, and behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 17(2), 83–95.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Ullsperger, P., Freude, G., & Erdmann, U. (2001). Auditory probe sensitivity to mental workload changes–an event-related potential study. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 40(3), 201–209.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vallacher, R. R., & Wegner, D. M. (1989). Levels of personal agency: Individual variation in action identification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(4), 660–671.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wakslak, C., & Trope, Y. (2009). The effect of construal level on subjective probability estimates. Psychological Science, 20(1), 52–58.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wakslak, C. J., Nussbaum, S., Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (2008). Representations of the self in the near and distant future. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(4), 757–773.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Wiesenfeld, B. M., Reyt, J. N., Brockner, J., & Trope, Y. (2017). Construal level theory in organizational research. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4(March), 367–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu, C., Liu, Y., & Quinn-Walsh, C. M. (2008). Queuing network modeling of a real-time psychophysiological index of mental workload—P300 in event-related potential (ERP). IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics-Part A: Systems and Humans, 38(5), 1068–1084.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xu, G., Wu, Y., & Li, M. (2020). The study of influence of sound on visual ERP-based brain computer Interface. Sensors, 20(4), 1203–1217.

    Article  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, M., & Wang, J. (2009). Psychological distance asymmetry: The spatial dimension vs. other dimensions. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19(3), 497–507.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu, L., He, Y., Chen, Q., & Hu, M. (2017). It's the thought that counts: The effects of construal level priming and donation proximity on consumer response to donation framing. Journal of Business Research, 76, 44–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Author notes

  1. Behcet Yalin Ozkara and Volkan Dogan are contributed equally to this paper. The order of authorship was determined randomly.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, Eskisehir Osmangazi University, 26480, Eskisehir, Turkey

    Behcet Yalin Ozkara & Volkan Dogan

Authors
  1. Behcet Yalin Ozkara
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Volkan Dogan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Behcet Yalin Ozkara.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ozkara, B.Y., Dogan, V. Is either peripheral detail(s) or central feature(s) easy to mentally process?: EEG examination of mental workload based on construal level theory. Curr Psychol 41, 5185–5194 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01036-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-01036-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation