《Politeness and Psychological Distance A Construal Level Perspective》.pdfVIP

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology © 2010 American Psychological Association 2010, Vol. 98, No. 2, 268–280 0022-3514/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0016960 Politeness and Psychological Distance: A Construal Level Perspective Elena Stephan and Nira Liberman Yaacov Trope Tel-Aviv University New York University According to politeness theory (P. Brown S. Levinson, 1987), politeness serves to both reflect and regulate social distance. On the basis of this notion and on construal level theory (N. Liberman Y. Trope, 2008; N. Liberman, Y. Trope, E. Stephan, 2007), it was predicted that politeness would be related to abstract construal, temporal distance, and spatial distance. Eight studies supported this prediction. Politeness increased when the addressees were construed abstractly (Study 1), were tempo- rally distant (Studies 2, 3), and were spatially distant (Study 4). It was also found that increasing politeness produced abstract construals (Study 5), greater temporal distance (Study 6), and greater spatial distance (Study 7, 8). These findings shed light on the way politeness operates in different cultures and is conveyed in different languages, and they support the idea that dimensions of psychological distance are interrelated. Keywords: politeness, psychological distance