Validating Measures of Mental Abstraction

Within Construal Level Theory dozens of dependent variables have been used to measure mental abstraction. However, the majority of these have not been substantively validated. We tried to rectify this by conducting validation studies of seven dependent variables used in past research to measure mental abstraction: the Behavior Identification Form, a segmentation task, a categorization task, two types of interval estimation tasks, and two types of automated linguistic measures of abstraction. Participants (N = 2,225) were instructed to think about an object, event, or behavior, in either concrete or abstract terms. We then measured their mental representation of these things using one of the seven purported measures of mental abstraction. Only two of the measures—the Behavior Identification Form and one measure of linguistic concreteness—substantively registered our strong and direct manipulation of abstraction. We recommend against the use of the other measures and express concern about the conclusions drawn from past research that has used these measures as their primary dependent variable. A greater focus on validating measures of mental abstraction is essential for the continued development of the field.