Psychological Proximity Improves Reasoning: Evidence from Academic Aptitude Test in the Lab and the Field
Authors: Hadar Britt , Katzir Maayan , Pumpian Sephi , Karelitz Tzur , Liberman Nira 
Published: June 2022

Performance on standardized academic aptitude tests (AAT) can determine important life outcomes. However, it is not clear whether and which aspects of the content of test questions affect performance. We examined the effect of psychological distance embedded in test questions. In Study 1 (N = 41,209), we classified the content of existing AAT questions as invoking proximal versus distal details. We found better performance with proximal compared to distal questions, especially for low-achieving examinees. Study 2 and 3 manipulated the distance of questions adapted from AATs and examined three moderators: overall AAT score, working-memory capacity and presence of irrelevant information. In Study 2 (N = 129), proximity (versus distance) improved the performance of low-achieving participants. In Study 3 (N = 1,744), a field study, among low-achieving examinees, proximity improved performance on questions that included irrelevant information. Together, these results suggest that the psychological distance that is invoked by the content of test questions has important consequences for performance in real-life, high-stakes tests. Consider the following problem: Danielle prefers bananas over apples, and apples over strawberries. Considering her parents want to send her favorite fruit in the lunchbox, should they buy bananas or strawberries? This type of problems is often presented in academic aptitude tests (AAT), but can also emerge, sometimes in more complex forms, in real life, when, for example, we need to reason through an intricate social situation (e.g., reach an integrative agreement between multiple parties with conflicting interests), or come up with a novel, creative way to formalize a multifaceted problem. The present paper examines how psychological distance affects reasoning about complex problems of this type. Would it help examinee if the problems pertain to psychologically distal objects and events (in the example above, make it about more exotic fruits such as persimmon, pitaya, and guava), or rather if the problem pertain to objects and events in the solver’s environment (in the example above, make the problem about familiar fruits, retaining its logical structure)? The literature seems to offer opposite answers. Some approaches suggest that distancing would make it easier for the problem solver to filter out irrelevant details (e.g., the distracting thought “won’t strawberries get smashed in the lunchbox?” is less likely to occur with respect to a pitaya if one has, as most of us, no clue how it looks), and thus represent the logical structure of the problem more clearly. In contrast, other approaches suggest that proximity would make the problem details more concrete and vivid and thus make it easier to represent the problem parameters and to ultimately solve it (e.g., being able to represent strawberries and apples in shape and color helps one represent the relations between them). The question of whether distance or rather proximity is more conducive to solving complex problems is obviously interesting for practical reasons, because knowing the answer would help people solve such problems, and design interventions to help others. But the question is also interesting for theoretical reasons, in view of the aforementioned disagreement. In what follows, we first review in more detail the opposing views on how distance might affect solving complex problems, and then report three studies that attempted to answer it empirically.