Nira Liberman
Tel Aviv University, Psychology, Faculty Member
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We predicted and found in three experiments that psychological distance increases conceptual generalization. We manipulated psychological distance by describing a medicine as being either domestic (proximal) or foreign (distal) and... more
We predicted and found in three experiments that psychological distance increases conceptual generalization. We manipulated psychological distance by describing a medicine as being either domestic (proximal) or foreign (distal) and examined generalization by testing how information about initial experience (positive vs. negative) with this medicine influences evaluations of similar products. In all three experiments, and across both Israeli and German participants, we found that people generalized from experience with products that are distal (foreign) more than from proximal (domestic) products. We explain the relation between distance and generalization in terms of the accuracy–applicability trade-off inherent in generalization and discuss how it aligns with construal-level theory.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Perception
When a person states that s/he is disgusted by an outgroup, what can we conclude about his/her attitudes, beliefs, and character? Based on an analysis of physical disgust, we predicted that expressing disgust toward a social group would... more
When a person states that s/he is disgusted by an outgroup, what can we conclude about his/her attitudes, beliefs, and character? Based on an analysis of physical disgust, we predicted that expressing disgust toward a social group would convey a belief that this group possesses a negative essence; namely, that it has a biological basis, and clear boundaries, and that its members share immutable, inherent characteristics. Because being disgusting violates the moral foundation of purity, we also predicted that expressing disgust toward a social group would convey moral condemnation of that group. In three studies, we found that an expression of disgust (vs. anger, hate) toward homosexuals (Studies 1 and 3) and Arabs (Study 2) was perceived as conveying a negative and essentializing attitude toward that group and a perception of this group as impure and immoral. Expressions of disgust conveyed a more avoidant yet less violent and a less prejudiced (and therefore more legitimate) attitude than expressions of hate. Similar results were obtained in Study 4, in which beliefs were expressed toward unidentified social groups and participants had to indicate which emotions accompany that belief. (PsycINFO Database Record
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Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Experimental Psychology, Decision Making, Mental Representation, Imagination, and 15 moreCategorization, Medicine, Probability, Construal Level Theory, Humans, Judgment, Concept Formation, Female, Male, Experimental, Psychological Distance, Preference, Probability Learning, Choice Behavior, and Likelihood
5 Wishful Thinking From a Pragmatic Hypothesis-Testing Perspective Yaacov Trope Benjamin Gervey Nira Liberman Wishful thinking, people's tendency to ... the task than subjects who were asked to explain a hypothetical failure on that... more
5 Wishful Thinking From a Pragmatic Hypothesis-Testing Perspective Yaacov Trope Benjamin Gervey Nira Liberman Wishful thinking, people's tendency to ... the task than subjects who were asked to explain a hypothetical failure on that task (Campbell & Fairey, 1985; Sherman ...
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Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Perception, Cognition, Behavior, and 15 moreIdeology, Prediction, Abstraction, Medicine, Construal Level Theory, Planning, Counterfactual Thinking, Generalization, Humans, Psychological, Classification, Distance Perception, Cognitive processes, Psychological Distance, and Psychological Theory
Symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder are related to atypical sensory processing, particularly sensory over-responsivity, in both children and adults. In adults, obsessive–compulsive symptoms are also associated with the attenuation... more
Symptoms of obsessive–compulsive disorder are related to atypical sensory processing, particularly sensory over-responsivity, in both children and adults. In adults, obsessive–compulsive symptoms are also associated with the attenuation of access to the internal state and compensatory reliance on proxies for these states, including fixed rules and rituals. We aimed to examine the associations between sensory over-responsivity, the tendency to seek proxies for internal states, and obsessive–compulsive symptoms in children. Parents of 404 children between 5 and 10 years of age completed online measures of obsessive–compulsive symptoms, seeking proxies for internal states, sensory over-responsivity, and anxiety. Linear regression, dominance analysis, and network analysis were used to explore the unique associations between these variables. The tendency to seek proxies for internal states was more strongly associated with obsessive–compulsive symptoms than with anxiety symptoms and uniq...
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Relative Deprivation
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We suggest that individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience difficulty accessing their internal states, including their feelings, emotions, preferences, and motivations. Instead, they rely on proxies to inform them of... more
We suggest that individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) experience difficulty accessing their internal states, including their feelings, emotions, preferences, and motivations. Instead, they rely on proxies to inform them of these states—that is, discernible substitutes in the form of fixed rules and rituals, observable behavior, and indexes. The Seeking Proxies for Internal States (SPIS) model of OCD proposes that compulsions, obsessions, indecision, and doubt result from seeking and using such proxies. The SPIS model not only accounts for these OCD symptoms but also sheds new light on normal processes of action control, metacognition, decision-making, and introspection.
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The Seeking Proxies for Internal States (SPIS) model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) proposes an account of OCD symptoms in terms of two core components: attenuation of access to internal states and seeking proxies for internal... more
The Seeking Proxies for Internal States (SPIS) model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) proposes an account of OCD symptoms in terms of two core components: attenuation of access to internal states and seeking proxies for internal states. Specifically, the SPIS model posits that OCD is associated with difficulty in accessing various internal states, including feelings, preferences, memories, and even physiological states. This difficulty drives obsessive-compulsive individuals seek and rely on compensatory proxies, or substitutes, for their internal states. These proxies are perceived by the individual with OCD to be more easily discernible or less ambiguous compared to the internal states for which they substitute, and can take the form of fixed rules, rituals, or reliance on external sources of information. In the present article we first provide a detailed explanation of the SPIS model, and then review empirical studies that examined the model in a variety of domains, including bodily states, emotions, and decision-making. Next, we elaborate on the SPIS model's novel account of compulsive rituals, obsessions and doubt and relate them to extant theoretical accounts of OCD. To conclude, we highlight open questions that can guide future research and discuss the model's clinical implications.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Aptitude
The present article conceptualizes mental time travel as a special case of transcending psychological distance, which rests on the... more
The present article conceptualizes mental time travel as a special case of transcending psychological distance, which rests on the uniquelyhumanabilitytoconsidercounterfactualandhypotheticalworlds.Wediscussthepossiblechallengesthatcounterfactuality andfuturitypresentbeforeourcognitivesystem,whichincludeseveringthe realfromimagined worldsand dealingwithuncertainty. We suggest, similar toextantapproaches totheoryof mind,that the useof abstract–symbolic mental representations helps overcome these difficulties. We present empirical evidence to support the claim that counterfactual and hypothetical objects are encoded in a more abstract manner than ascertained objects. Finally, we discuss the possible advantages of linguistic/disembodied representation over the embodied–experiential form. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Certainty
We are regularly told about people at various locations around the globe, both near and far, who are in distress or in dire need. In the present research, we examined how the prospective donor’s psychological distance from a given victim... more
We are regularly told about people at various locations around the globe, both near and far, who are in distress or in dire need. In the present research, we examined how the prospective donor’s psychological distance from a given victim may interact with the victim’s identification to determine the donor’s willingness to accede to requests for donations to help the victim in question. In three studies, we measured willingness to donate (Studies 1 & 2) and actual donations (Study 3) to identified or unidentified victims, while measuring (Study 1) or manipulating (Studies 2 & 3) the psychological distance between prospective donors and the recipients. Results indicate that increasing the psychological distance between prospective donors and victims decreases willingness to help — but only when the victims are unidentified, not when they are identified. This suggests that victim’s identification mitigates the effect of distance on donor’s willingness to help.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Science
Recent findings suggest that stimulus construal level (high vs. low) is mentally associated with its vertical position (up vs. down). We delve deeper into this association and its meanings, and examine, for the first time, its... more
Recent findings suggest that stimulus construal level (high vs. low) is mentally associated with its vertical position (up vs. down). We delve deeper into this association and its meanings, and examine, for the first time, its complementary association, that of stimulus psychological distance (distant vs. close) and its vertical position (up vs. down). In Study 1 and 2 goals of activities were positioned higher than the means of performing them and were perceived as more compatible with a spatially higher viewpoint. In Study 3, self-perceptions were more invariant when items were presented at the top (vs. the bottom) of a visual display. In Study 4, participants positioned imagination-related concepts above reality-related concepts. In Study 5, participants provided more distant time estimates for scenarios presented at the top (vs. the bottom) of a display. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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The formation of attitudes or preferences for alternatives that consist of rapid numerical sequences has been suggested to reflect either a summation or an averaging principle. Previous studies indicate the presence of two mechanisms,... more
The formation of attitudes or preferences for alternatives that consist of rapid numerical sequences has been suggested to reflect either a summation or an averaging principle. Previous studies indicate the presence of two mechanisms, accumulators (that mediate summation) and population-coding (that mediate averaging), which operate in preference formation tasks of rapid numerical sequences, and are subject to task-demands and individual differences. Here, we test whether participants can flexibly control the preference mechanism they deploy as a function of the reward contingency. Towards this aim, participants in two studies ( N1 = 21, N2 = 23) made choices between the same sequence alternatives in two task-framing sessions, which made the reward dependent on the sequence-sum or sequence-average, respectively. The results demonstrate that although participants show an overall bias in favour of averaging, they are also remarkably flexible in deploying an averaging or a summation ty...
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Page 1. RECOGNITION OF ELDERLY SPEECH AND VOICE-DRIVEN DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL Stephen Anderson, Natalie Liberman, Erica Bernstein, Stephen Foster, Erin Cate, Brenda Levin Dragon Systems, Inc. ... A small fraction (8%) of the speech consisted... more
Page 1. RECOGNITION OF ELDERLY SPEECH AND VOICE-DRIVEN DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL Stephen Anderson, Natalie Liberman, Erica Bernstein, Stephen Foster, Erin Cate, Brenda Levin Dragon Systems, Inc. ... A small fraction (8%) of the speech consisted of read Wall St. ...
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Abstract The Seeking Proxies for Internal States (SPIS) model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) posits that OCD is associated with attenuated access to internal states. Here we explored the implications of this model in the realm of... more
Abstract The Seeking Proxies for Internal States (SPIS) model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) posits that OCD is associated with attenuated access to internal states. Here we explored the implications of this model in the realm of emotions. Participants with OCD, anxiety disorders, and non-clinical control participants completed the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), assessing two domains of emotional intelligence: Experiential emotional intelligence (EI), reflecting the ability to perceive and feel emotions accurately, and Strategic EI, reflecting the ability to understand and manage emotions correctly. As only Experiential EI requires accurate perception of one’s emotions for adequate performance, we predicted an interaction between group and EI area. Specifically, we predicted that compared to both anxiety disorders and healthy control participants, OCD participants would show a larger deficit in Experiential area of the MSCEIT relative to the Strategic area. Results were fully in line with this prediction. Moreover, supporting the specificity of the hypothesized deficit to OCD, participants with anxiety disorders did not differ from non-clinical control participants in their performance, and findings were not attributable to anxiety or depression levels. These results replicate and extend previous findings obtained with analogue samples and suggest that OCD is associated with attenuated access to emotional states, which may be partially compensated for by reliance on semantic knowledge of emotion.
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. People apply what they learn from experience not only to the experienced stimuli, but also to novel stimuli. But what determines how widely people generalize what they have learned? Using a predictive learning paradigm, we examined the... more
. People apply what they learn from experience not only to the experienced stimuli, but also to novel stimuli. But what determines how widely people generalize what they have learned? Using a predictive learning paradigm, we examined the hypothesis that a low (vs. high) probability of an outcome following a predicting stimulus would widen generalization. In three experiments, participants learned which stimulus predicted an outcome (S+) and which stimulus did not (S−) and then indicated how much they expected the outcome after each of eight novel stimuli ranging in perceptual similarity to S+ and S−. The stimuli were rings of different sizes and the outcome was a picture of a lightning bolt. As hypothesized, a lower probability of the outcome widened generalization. That is, novel stimuli that were similar to S+ (but not to S−) produced expectations for the outcome that were as high as those associated with S+.