Abstract
Construal-level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010) states that people use increasingly higher levels of abstraction to represent a mental object, as the psychological distance to the object increases. Kanten (2011) investigated during a series of experiments the role of construal-level in prediction of time needed to perform a task. The results revealed an increase of task duration estimates when moving up in construal-level. A time contraction mechanism has been proposed as a possible explanation for the observed increase of estimates. Time shrinks when people are moving up in abstraction, consequentially more time is needed to cover the same amount of work. The main objective of the present research was to replicate Kanten's findings of increasing task duration estimates as a function of moving up in abstraction. This was achieved by investigating whether the findings would prevail for estimates of tolerance for delays, for affective durations, and for task durations in an anchoring paradigm. During three experiments, participants induced with temporal distance were instructed to estimate task durations (experiment 1), tolerance for delays (experiment 2), and affective durations (experiment 3). The results showed a consistent increase of the durations estimates over temporal distance. When comparing two task durations in the distant future, they appear more similar as a consequence of time contraction (experiment 2). The discussions centers around the contraction of time as a function of psychological distance, and how changes in time perception influence peoples predictions of duration estimates.