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In this chapter we apply Trope and Liberman’s construal-level theory (CLT)
of psychological distance (see Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope & Liber-
man, 2010) to fear of crime. CLT explores the mechanisms through which
individuals are capable of experiencing and expressing reactions toward
events that are not present in their immediate context. CLT is a powerful
theory with relevance not just to cognitive and social psychology but also to
applied research in the areas of climate change (Spence, Poortinga, & Pid-
geon, 2012) and consumer behavior (Williams, Stein, & Galguera, 2014), to
name just two. In these pages we elaborate why CLT may shed light on the
nature of—and mechanisms driving—fear of crime.
According to CLT individuals utilize two connected mechanisms to tran-
scend the ‘here and now’ and react to distal objects or events. The rst is
psychological distance. In the words of Trope and Liberman (2010, p. 442),
“psychological distance refers to the perception of when an event occurs,
where it occurs, to whom it occurs, and whether it occurs.” People routinely
represent and respond to objects that are not present in their ‘here and now,’
with crime being a good example. People have a conception of crime and
criminal acts, even though direct experience is (thankfully) relatively rare.
They can think about crime as an issue and a class of events that are more
or less relevant to them along a number of different dimensions. Specically,
CLT posits that individuals can experience a distal event like crime as either
close (i.e., psychologically proximate) or far (i.e., psychologically distant)
according to the four distance dimensions of time (when), space (where),
social distance (to whom), and hypotheticality (whether).
The second element of CLT is mental construal. While psychological
distance refers to ‘when’, ‘where, ‘to whom,’ and ‘whether’ a distal event
occurs, mental construal refers to the representation of the event itself, that
is, ‘what’ might occur. Intriguingly for the study of public attitudes to crime
and people’s experiences of fear of crime, CLT predicts that representation
can be either high-level, composed of abstract, superordinate, and decontex-
tualized features of distal events or low-level, composed of concrete, subor-
dinate, and context-bound features of distal events. A high-level conception
of crime, for instance, would stress the abstract and organizing ‘gist’ of this
2 Construal-Level Theory and
Fear of Crime
Ioanna Gouseti and Jonathan Jackson
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Construal-Level Theory and Fear of Crime 23
class of events; one represents crime as a general, abstract category that has
certain high-level features (such as harm, intent, theft, and violence) as a
social problem. By contrast a low-level conception of crime would stress
more varied and concrete features of specic realizations; crime is a more
specic threat, differentiated and potentially tangible in the everyday.
CLT proposes that the two mechanisms—psychological distance and
level of construal—are distinct but interrelated. On one hand, when people
psychologically experience a distal event as distant in time, space, social
distance, and reality, they are more likely to construe it through abstract,
high-level lens, that is, by focusing, for example, on its causes, desirability,
and goals. On the other hand, when people psychologically experience a
distal event as proximal, they tend to construe it through concrete, low-level
lens, by focusing, for example, on its consequences, feasibility, and means.
Moreover, the relationship between the two mechanisms of transcending
the here and now is bidirectional. For instance, construing a distal event in
high-level terms (vs. low-level terms) is related to psychologically experienc-
ing it as distant (rather than proximal).
Importantly, CLT research shows that the impact of psychological dis-
tance and mental construal on lay reactions to distal events depend on the
perspective that is inherent in the reaction in question as well as the under-
lying valence of the distal event in question (Trope & Liberman, 2010).
Recent research ndings have shown that psychological distance decreases
the intensity of affect that is experienced for both negative and positive
events, thus improving the evaluation of negative events and worsening the
evaluation of positive events. To the contrary, it has been shown that an
abstract way of thinking about distal events (vs. a concrete way of thinking)
is related to improved evaluations of both positive and negative events, that
is, irrespective of their perceived valence (Williams et al., 2014).
Why might CLT open up new directions of research for fear of crime?
Take the example of stranger violence. Most people do not experience vio-
lence directly, as victims, yet they are nevertheless capable of thinking, feel-
ing, and taking action about the risk of violent victimization. In CLT terms,
fear of crime is a set of representations and reactions toward the distal event
of stranger violence that is founded on psychological distance and men-
tal construal. When people experience the distal event of stranger violence
as psychologically distant, we speculate, they experience it as occurring in
remote places, far from now, and to people different from them and their
peers. They will also tend to construe the distal event in high-level terms
that stress what is at the ‘core’ of the abstract concept of violence, that is,
its abstract organizing features that do not vary from one realization of vio-
lence to another (and, as such, may be more easily related to other abstract
social problems, like moral decay and rising inequality). To the extent that
psychological distance from crime and abstract, high-level crime construal
will relate to fear-of-crime reactions, it may be that fear of crime is more
of a diffuse anxiety about the causes and social signicance of violence in
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24 Ioanna Gouseti and Jonathan Jackson
contemporary society, rather than more concrete worries or fears about vio-
lent victimization in one’s own neighborhood (cf. Farrall, Jackson, & Gray,
2009; Girling, Loader, & Sparks, 2000).
Conversely, when stranger violence is psychologically experienced as
proximal, it is assumed to be experienced as occurring soon, in a nearby
location and to oneself or similar others. CLT predicts that in such cases,
people will also construe stranger violence in a more concrete, specic, and
variegated fashion, that is, by focusing on situational features that do vary
from one realization of violence to another (and, as such, may be more eas-
ily related to images of particular perpetrators, victims, and crime scenes).
Psychological proximity to crime and concrete, low-level crime construal
may thus be more likely to involve episodes of worries about one’s own risk
of violent victimization, where the threat of violence is projected onto local
places, local people, and local situations with particular characteristics (cf.
Jackson, 2006).
The chapter proceeds as follows: First, we present the central theoretical
arguments and research ndings of the CLT of psychological distance. Sec-
ond, we discuss ways of applying CLT to people’s representations of crime.
Third, we discuss ways of applying CLT to fear of crime. Finally, we make
some concluding remarks on the theoretical, methodological, and policy
implications of the suggested stream of research.
CONSTRUAL-LEVEL THEORY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE
The rst of the two principles of CLT is that human beings are capable
of experiencing reactions toward objects or events that are distal through
the mechanism of psychological distance. Psychological distance has four
dimensions: time, space, social distance, and hypotheticality (Trope, Liber-
man, & Wakslak, 2007). One can think, feel, and act about events that
happen somewhere else (compared to one’s here), in the past or in the
future (compared to one’s now), to very different people than one’s own self
(compared to one’s own self or similar others), and that their occurrence is
unrealistic (rather than realistic; Liberman, Trope, & Stephan, 2007). The
reference point to traverse the psychological distance is oneself in the ‘here
and now,’ and everything that is not present in the ‘here and now’ is consid-
ered to be distal.
The second principle of CLT refers to mental construals of distal events.
These are representations of distal events that are used by individuals to
mentally represent the event in question. The theory holds that there are
two types of mental construal, based on the weight that is placed on either
the primary or the secondary features of the distal events. High-level con-
strual includes decontextualized and schematic features that are core to the
content of the distal events, and are therefore relatively stable over time and
in different situations. These can refer, for example, to the causes of events,
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Construal-Level Theory and Fear of Crime 25
their goal, and/or their desirability. On the contrary, low-level construal is
largely composed of varied features of distal events that are highly depen-
dent on the context of their occurrence and thus detailed, incidental, and
less stable over time and in different situations. This type of construal refers
mostly to the consequences of distal events, their means, and/or their feasi-
bility (Trope et al., 2007).
As mentioned earlier, psychological distance and mental construal are
distinct but interrelated concepts in CLT. Mentally representing a distal
event abstractly (by focusing, for example, on its causes rather than its con-
sequences) is related to psychologically experiencing the event as distant
rather than proximal, that is, as occurring far from one’s here and now,
to different people than one’s own self, and as highly improbable to occur
(Rim, Hansen, & Trope, 2013). Moreover, the association between the two
mechanisms of transcending the ‘here and now’ is bidirectional, such that
psychologically experiencing an event as proximal rather than distant is
related to construing it through low-level, highly context-bound lens rather
than high-level, abstract lens (Trope & Liberman, 2010).
The theoretical insights of CLT have been explored in numerous empiri-
cal studies. Starting with temporal distance, several studies have shown that
proximity to (rather than distance from) a distal event in time is related
to mentally construing it in a low-level (rather than high-level) manner,
by focusing, for example, on its means rather than its goals (Liberman &
Trope, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2010). Examining the association between
mental construals of action identication and temporal distance, one study
(Liberman & Trope, 2008) provided participants with an open-ended
description of various events that were to happen in the near or distant
future. It was found that distant future activities were more likely to be iden-
tied in high-level terms, that is, goal-related parameters, such as doing well
in school, rather than in low-level terms, that is, means-related parameters,
such as reading a textbook (see also Vallacher & Wegner, 1987, 1989).
In another study (Day & Bartels, 2008), participants were asked to assess
the similarity of pairs of actions to explore temporal changes in represen-
tations. Some of the pairs were similar at high-level (goal-related) terms,
while others were similar at low-level (means-related) terms. When the
actions were described as taking place in the near future, pairs of actions
with low-level similarities were judged as more similar than event pairs with
high-level similarities. By contrast, when the actions were described as tak-
ing place in the distant future, event pairs with high-level commonalities
were judged as more similar than event pairs with low-level commonalities.
The key assumption in the case of spatial distance is that high-level mental
construals (vs. low-level construals) of a distal event are associated with psy-
chological distance (rather than proximity) from the event in spatial terms.
In one study (Henderson, Fujita, Trope, & Liberman, 2006), participants
viewed an animated lm showing two triangles and a circle moving against
and around each other. They were told that the lm depicted the action of
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26 Ioanna Gouseti and Jonathan Jackson
three teenagers around a cabin at a well-known summer camp; the spatially
near condition included a camp located on the East Coast of the United
States, while the spatially distant condition included a camp located on the
West Coast. Participants were then asked to divide the ongoing behavioral
sequence watched in the lm into as many sections as they deemed appro-
priate. It was found that participants created fewer, broad sections out of
the lm, indicating high-level construals, when they believed that the camp-
ers it depicted were in a spatially distant rather than near location.
In another study (Henderson et al., 2006), six graphs, providing informa-
tion about several events that occurred at New York University (NYU) from
1999 to 2004, were presented to participants. In the spatially proximate
condition, the events were described as occurring at “the NYU campus in
Manhattan,” whereas in the spatially remote condition, they were described
as occurring in “the NYU campus in Florence, Italy.” Half the graphs
depicted an upward trend of cases from 1999 through 2003, and the other
half depicted a downward trend of cases from 1999 through 2003, while
in both cases the nal year deviated from the global trend (i.e., downward
in the former case, and upward in the latter case). Participants were then
asked to assess the likelihood that cases for 2005 would go up or down from
the previous year, using a 6-point scale (1 = very unlikely; 6 = very likely).
It was found that participants’ assessments relied more on global informa-
tion (rather than deviations) that denote high-level representations, when
the predictions were about the spatially distant location; conversely, they
tended to rely on deviations from the upward or downward trend (rather
than the global trend) that denote low-level representations, when the event
in question was believed to occur in the spatially proximate location.
As regards social distance, the hypothesis is that socially distant events
(rather than socially proximal), for example, events that are perceived as
occurring to other people rather than one’s own self or similar others, are
associated with high-level, abstract construals (rather than low-level, con-
crete construals). To test the assumption, Galinsky, Gruenfeld, and Magee
(2003) asked research participants to complete a writing task that activated
the experience of either high or low power, with the former being consid-
ered as increasing the social distance from others compared to the latter.
Participants were then asked to complete a measure of inclusiveness of cat-
egorization, indicating how good members of a given category were atypi-
cal exemplars. It was found that high-power priming, which denotes social
distance, was related to categorizations of greater breadth that were consid-
ered as abstract construal whereas low-power priming, which denotes social
proximity, was related to less inclusive categorizations that were considered
as concrete construal.
In another study (Liviatan, Trope, & Liberman, 2008), participants were
asked to read about a target person who had attended classes that were either
similar to (social proximity condition) or different from (social distance con-
dition) those attended by the participants. Participants were then prompted
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Construal-Level Theory and Fear of Crime 27
to imagine the student engaging in various activities and were asked to
choose in each case one of the two provided descriptions that best described
the activity in question. One of the descriptions always focused on the means
of the activity (low-level construal condition) and the other description on
the goal of the activity (high-level construal condition). As expected, partici-
pants were more likely to choose goals-focused descriptions, when they were
socially distant from the student (i.e., thought to have attended different
classes from him or her) compared to those who were socially proximal to
the student (i.e., thought to have attended similar classes to him or her), and
were more likely to choose means-focused descriptions.
Finally, the key assumption about the association between hypotheti-
cality (which pertains to thinking about alternatives to reality) and mental
construal is that mentally representing a distal event abstractly (rather than
concretely) is related to experiencing it as unlikely to occur (rather than
likely). Wakslak, Trope, Liberman, and Alony (2006) sent to their research
participants a yer advertising a research assistant position, which was
described either in general (high-level) terms or in specic (low-level) terms.
Then, half the participants were told that they would be almost certain to
get the position if they signed up for the post (high-likelihood condition);
the other half were told that they would be unlikely to get the position if
they signed up for the post (low-likelihood condition). After signing up,
participants completed an unrelated study, and at the end, they were asked
to complete a surprise “recall test,” indicating the nature of the research
assistantship that had been advertised earlier. It was found that the par-
ticipants in the distant (low-likelihood) condition were more likely to pro-
vide general (rather than specic) descriptions of the position, denoting
a high-level, abstract construal of it. By contrast, the participants in the
proximity (high-likelihood) condition were more likely to provide detailed
(rather than general) descriptions of the position, denoting a low-level con-
strual of it.
In another study (Wakslak et al., 2006), participants were asked to
imagine that they were planning on engaging in four different scenarios,
namely, hosting a friend in New York City, going on a camping trip, mov-
ing apartments, and having a yard sale. The scenarios were described as
either almost certain to occur (high-probability condition) or almost certain
not to occur (low-probability condition). After presenting each scenario,
researchers asked participants to place into groups items from a list by writ-
ing them next to each other and then circling those that belong to the same
group. It was found that participants in the high-likelihood condition were
more likely to classify the groups into narrower categories, which denote
low-level construal, compared to the participants in the low-likelihood con-
dition who were more likely to classify the groups into broader categories,
which denote high-level construal.
Overall, the empirical examination of the theoretical assumptions of CLT
provides supporting evidence in most of the published cases. The empirical
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28 Ioanna Gouseti and Jonathan Jackson
support to the theory is also strengthened by the wide range of the exam-
ined phenomena, including visual or verbal stimuli, conceptual abstractions,
action identication, prediction, ideology, self-control, and negotiation (see
Beer & Keltner, 2004; Förster, Özelsel, & Epstude, 2010; Freitas, Gollwit-
zer, & Trope, 2004; Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006; Hen-
derson & Trope, 2009; Henderson, Trope, & Carnevale, 2006; Trope &
Liberman, 2010). In the rest of the chapter we consider the applicability of
CLT to crime as a representation and crime as a subjective risk that people
appraise and respond to emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally.
CLT AND CRIME
Criminological research has repeatedly shown that the association between
crime—either in the form of local crime rates or criminal victimization—and
fear of crime is not always positive, and that direct and indirect experiences
of crime do not account for most of the variation in fear of crime (Ferraro,
1995; Hale, 1996). Mixed ndings exist also with regard to the relationship
between fear of crime and media images of crime (Winkel & Vrij, 1990).
Crime messages in the media have been found to have positive associa-
tions with lay reactions to victimization (i.e., increased fear-of-crime levels),
negative associations (i.e., decreased fear-of-crime levels), or no association
whatsoever (Banks, 2005; Callanan, 2012; Chadee & Ditton, 2005; Wil-
liams & Dickinson, 1993). These research results raise further questions
about how individuals mentally represent crime events that are not present
in their immediate context, how they link these representations up to their
immediate context, and how these mechanisms inform their reactions to the
risk of victimization.
From a CLT perspective, these questions can be framed as follows:
First, how do individuals construe and psychologically experience the dis-
tal event of crime? Second, how does the mental construal of crime relate
to psychological distance from crime? Third, how do the two mechanisms
of transcending the here and now, namely, mental construal and psycho-
logical distance, relate to crime–risk perception, such as perceived likeli-
hood, perceived impact and perceived controllability of crime, emotional
responses to crime, like worry, anxiety and fear, and behavioral reactions to
the risk of crime, such as the adoption of protective measures and avoidance
behaviors?
This line of inquiry highlights the importance of the subjective mean-
ing of ‘crime.’ Criminological work on crime signals and their social and
cultural signicance (Girling et al., 2000; Innes, 2004) suggests that crime
talk in the media and in real life as well as crime experience in everyday
life are based on a dialectic between ‘distance and proximity, abstractness
and particularity, generic formats and localized stories . . . ’ (Girling et al.,
2000, p. 10). As experienced and expressed in daily life, crime can be seen
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Construal-Level Theory and Fear of Crime 29
not just as a concrete risk but also a metaphor about moral decline and
social change (Farrall et al., 2009). Drawing on a 3-year examination of
a case study of public concerns about crime, security and local space in a
city of North West England, Girling et al. (2000) showed that (a) the way
crime is represented is crucial in shaping public reactions to it, (b) the crime
representations are bound up in the local context, and (c) the highly con-
textualized representations of crime include both concrete crime incidents
as well as more diffuse images of crime as a social problem (see also Sparks,
Girling, & Loader, 2001).
The ‘signal crimes perspective’ (Innes, 2014) has attempted to bring
together and expand these ideas. Grounded in symbolic interactionist soci-
ology, and developing a social semiotic approach to risk perception, the ‘sig-
nal crimes perspective’ explores the process through which a crime incident
acquires the meaning that is necessary to raise risk perceptions and affec-
tive reactions (Innes, 2004, 2014). This body of work suggests that certain
‘signal crime’ incidents constitute communicative actions, or a ‘way of see-
ing’, which informs individuals’ interpretation of risk and security (Innes,
2004, 2014). According to the signal crimes perspective a ‘crime signal’
has three constitutive components: (a) the expression, that is, the crime (or
crime-related) event; (b) the content, that is, the meaning that is attributed
to the expression or the event; and (c) the effect, that is, the change that is
caused by the expression and its content. For a signal to be present, all the
three components should be identied.
CLT may have something to offer here. Psychological distance is ego-
centric in that its reference point is one’s own self, ‘here and now’, and a
distal event is removed from the reference point in terms of time, space,
others, and reality (Trope & Liberman, 2010). Psychological proximity to
the distal event of stranger violence, for example, pertains to experiencing it
as an event that might occur sooner rather than later (temporal proximity),
in places where one frequents rather than remote locations (spatial proxim-
ity), to one’s own self or people with similar characteristics rather than very
different people (social proximity), and as plausible rather than implausible
(high hypotheticality).
The ‘signal crimes perspective’ (SCP) argues that some crimes and disor-
derly events matter more than others in shaping risk perception. This may
be (partly) because, and/or especially when, signal crimes decrease people’s
psychological distance from the threat of victimization in temporal, spatial,
social, and hypothetical terms. As Girling et al. (1991) put it, the ‘crime’
part of the ‘fear of crime’ is rarely a reection of ‘objective risk’ but is mostly
related to a context of meaning and signicance. Therefore, when people, for
example, talk about crime, they also talk about place, time (Bottoms, 2012),
and others, which might bring the risk of victimization psychologically
‘closer’, that is, make it more personally relevant and thus more threatening.
In turn, psychological proximity may shape how people construe crime.
According to CLT, mental construal of distal events refers to the constitutive
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30 Ioanna Gouseti and Jonathan Jackson
parts of the events in question. A high-level mind-set focuses on primary
features of a distal event, such as its causes and goals, and is associated
with psychologically experiencing the event as distant; a low-level mind-set
focuses on secondary features of a distal event, such as its consequences
and means, and is associated with psychologically experiencing the event as
proximal (Trope & Liberman, 2010). Moving from a high-level construal
of crime to a low-level construal of crime is to shift one’s focus from the
causes and goals of crime to its consequences and means, which will also
be related to a shift from psychologically experiencing crime as occurring
in remote places, far from now, and to people different from one’s self to
psychologically experiencing it as occurring in nearby places, soon, and to
oneself or similar others.
Imagine a number of individuals who all live in the same neighborhood.
Half of them are prompted to think about the risk of being physically
assaulted by focusing on the causes of such an event, that is, why someone
might want to physically attack them. Among the possible reasons might
be, for example, retaliation, drug addiction, hate, robbery, and so on. The
other half is prompted to think about the risk of falling victim of physi-
cal assault, but by focusing on the consequences of such an event, that is,
how they will be affected if they were assaulted. The consequences of physi-
cal assault might include, for instance, physical injuries, emotional trauma,
shame, conict, and so on.
According to CLT, the rst group is prompted to develop a high-level con-
strual mind-set about physical assault, while the second group is prompted
to develop a low-level construal mind-set about the same crime. This is
because consequences depend on causes but not vice versa, making the for-
mer secondary features of distal events and the latter primary features of
distal events (Rim et al., 2013). For example, eliminating the desire of an
individual to physically attack one of the members of our two groups would
eliminate the experience of physical pain of the victim, because the attack
might not take place at all. To the contrary, eliminating the physical pain
that the victim of physical assault experiences does not affect the perpetra-
tor’s anger and desire to commit the assault.
Drawing on criminological work, violence may be seen among the rst
group in ways so well described in Girling et al.’s (2000) study of public
sensibilities about crime and security in ‘Middle England.’ Although con-
cerns about low-level street incivilities and the ‘youth’ were widespread, the
crime problem was perceived mostly as being created by ‘outsiders’ (Girling
et al., 2001, p. 890). One might call this a background concern about crime
animated by the signicance of crime as a sociopolitical problem (located
in a web of other abstract societal ills). Thinking, for example, about the
causes of violence turns one’s attention to psychological and social phenom-
ena, which are relatively abstract, such as poverty, social exclusion, psy-
chological disorders, and so on (Heber, 2014; Leverentz, 2012; Unnever &
Cullen, 2012).
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Construal-Level Theory and Fear of Crime 31
Among the second group, violence may be seen as something that could
happen locally, that is, linked to broken windows, drug use, young people
hanging around, street prostitution, and other context-bound phenomena.
Girling et al. (1999) observed in their study that lay concerns about crime
were associated with perceptions of crime as a consequence of social and
moral decline. These phenomena may function as a context that renders it
possible to think about the distal event of crime more vividly and in a more
detailed manner.
These phenomena may function as a context that renders it possible to
think about the distal event of crime more vividly and in a more detailed
manner. Focusing on the consequences of crime might thus turn the attention
to more concrete episodes of victimization and their aftermath, including
pain, trauma, and loss (Corby et al., 2014; DeLisi, Jones-Johnson, John-
son, & Hochstetler, 2014; Mears, Pickett, Golden, Chiricos, & Gertz, 2013).
The same ideas can be expanded into other areas of research on crime
representations. Take the example of crime images in the mass media. The
media are often regarded as one of the key resources of the public’s infor-
mation about crime and thus lay responses to crime (Chiricos, Eschholz, &
Gertz, 1997; Heath & Gilbert, 1996; Winkel & Vrij, 1990). Importantly,
criminological research has shown that the association between the mass
media, crime, and criminal justice is bidirectional; that is, media content
affects perceptions of crime and justice and vice versa (Taylor, 2014). Add-
ing CLT into this line of reasoning might enhance our understanding of the
media construction of crime, that is, how the mass media frame crime news
and build popular images of crime themselves as well as in comparison with
‘images’ of crime in ofcial crime statistics.
It might be, for instance, that particular types of crime are presented in
different ways than others in the media, which in turn impacts on people’s
mental construals of crime and psychological distance from the risk of vic-
timization. If, say, violent crime is more likely to be presented in the media
through low-level lens, in CLT words, that is, by focusing on situational
information about the violent event’s perpetrator(s), victim(s), spatial con-
text, and so on, compared to, say, white-collar crime, then, according to
CLT assumptions, the audience is exposed to different crime mind-sets, that
is, low-level and high-level, respectively. Moreover, these mind-sets might
affect the audience’s psychological distance from/proximity to crime, that is,
the psychological experience of where, when, to whom, and whether crime
might take place.
In sum, we contend that for events that typically signal to observers a
physically and socially disorganized context, such as crime-related behav-
iors, signs of disorder, and crime talks, to be perceived as ‘criminogenic’ and
threatening, two mechanisms of transcending the ‘here and now’ should be
present. On one hand, the distal event of crime needs to be psychologically
proximal rather than psychologically distant. On the other hand, the distal
event of crime needs to be construed through low-level, concrete lens rather
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32 Ioanna Gouseti and Jonathan Jackson
than abstract, high-level lens. Put differently, people might ‘see’ (or read or
hear about) criminal activities, physical and social incivilities, and social
disorganization in their environment, but the extent to which people project
criminal threat into these cues will also be related to their psychological dis-
tance from/proximity to crime and the type of their crime construals.
In the following section we turn to fear of crime, and we discuss possible
applications of CLT to affective, behavioral, and cognitive reactions to the
risk of criminal victimization.
CLT AND FEAR OF CRIME
The SCP posits that some crimes and/or antisocial events act as signs of
criminal threat, and are thus associated with people’s emotional, cognitive
and behavioral reactions to the crime risk (Innes, 2004, 2014). There are
two parts to the overall process described in SCP: rst, the shift from the
‘expression’ phase to the ‘content’ phase, which involves obtaining infor-
mation about a crime or crime-related event and perceiving it as a personal
threat, and, second, the shift from the ‘content’ phase to the ‘effect’ phase,
which involves perceiving the crime(-related) event as threatening and react-
ing to it cognitively, affectively, and/or behaviorally. At the core of the SCP
are thus three elements: the context (crime or crime-related event), the
meaning of the context (criminal threat), and the response to that meaning
(affect, behavior, cognition).
The element that is not clearly developed in SCP, we argue, is the relation-
ship between the reference point (i.e., one’s self in the ‘here and now’) and
the ‘context,’ the ‘meaning,’ and the ‘response.’ Utilizing CLT, we concep-
tualize this relationship through the mechanisms of psychological distance
and mental construal. We maintain that the ‘content’ of an ‘expression,’ in
the words of SCP (i.e., the meaning that is given to, say, a violent incident
about which one learns, like for example whether it is thought of as a per-
sonal threat or not) relies not only on the violent incident itself and its con-
text but also on the perceiver and his or her heuristics, that is, the intuition
he or she uses to come to terms with the news of the violent incident. In a
CLT approach to fear of crime, these heuristics are operationalized as psy-
chological distance from/proximity to crime and high-level/low-level crime
construals.
Imagine another group of individuals who all watch the same documen-
tary lm about the 9/11 attacks. According to previous criminological work
on the association between crime images in the media and fear of crime, the
potential impact of watching the documentary about 9/11 on the audience’s
fear of crime can be explained via three key assumptions: (a) the ‘substitu-
tion’ assumption, where it is argued that the effect of exposure to media
messages of crime on fear of crime is higher among those who lack per-
sonal experiences of crime (Gunter & Wakshlag, 1986; Liska & Baccaglini,
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Construal-Level Theory and Fear of Crime 33
1990); (b) the ‘resonance’ assumption, where it is argued that the effect
of exposure to media messages of crime on fear of crime is stronger when
it resonates real-life experiences (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli,
1980); and (c) the ‘afnity’ assumption, where it is posited that the effect
of media messages of crime on fear of crime is stronger when the audience
can identify with the victim (Gerbner, Gross, Jackson-Beeck, Jeffries-Fox, &
Signorielli, 1978; Paul, 1980).
Adopting a CLT perspective, we expand these hypotheses by arguing
that to interpret crime cues, images and/or information that one sees, hears
or reads about as personally threatening and worrisome, apart from their
experiential proximity to the crime in question, they need to psychologically
experience the crime as proximal and mentally construe it vividly. Imagine,
for example, that after watching the documentary, half of our hypothetical
individuals are prompted to think about the 9/11 events by focusing on the
causes of the terrorists’ suicide attacks. These could include, for example,
political, nancial and religious reasons. The other half is prompted to think
about the 9/11 attacks but to focus on the consequences of the atrocious
event. The consequences might include, for instance, physical injuries, emo-
tional trauma, fatality, and so on. The 9/11 attacks might constitute a ‘sig-
nal crime’ because ruminating about it might render the threat of terrorism
psychologically proximal, that is, make terrorism be experienced psycho-
logically as a threat that might happen sometime soon, somewhere nearby,
to people similar to the observer.
In CLT words, the rst group is prompted to develop a high-level con-
strual mind-set about the 9/11 attacks, while the second group is prompted
to develop a low-level construal mind-set about the attacks. Thinking about
the causes of the 9/11 attacks might turn the rst group’s attention to wider
and relatively abstract social phenomena, such as fanaticism, inequality,
fundamentalism, social exclusion, hate. To the contrary, thinking about the
consequences of 9/11 attacks might turn the second group’s attention to
more concrete incidents of death, injury, loss, and security, such as per-
sonal stories of some of the 2,996 people who were killed in the attacks
and their families, the security-related measures that the United States and
other countries took in the aftermath of the attacks, and the antiterrorism
laws that were enforced in many countries. While the rst type of construal
(i.e., high-level) reects a diffuse concern about terrorism as a sociopolitical
problem located in a web of other social phenomena, the second type of
construal (i.e., low-level) relates more to the particularities of the 9/11 ter-
rorist events, that is, information about how the 9/11 attacks took place, by
whom, and other context-bound features of the event. One might call this a
more situated concern about terrorism animated by images of perpetrators,
crime scenes, and methods of operation.
Taking the rst phase of the process that SCP describes, we argue that
whether the event of hearing about the 9/11 attacks shifts from an ‘expres-
sion’ of terrorism to a self-threatening crime risk or not will relate to whether
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34 Ioanna Gouseti and Jonathan Jackson
one psychologically experiences the distal event of terrorism as proximal,
that is, considering it as likely to occur (rather than unlikely), in nearby
locations (rather than remote places), soon (rather than far from now), and
to themselves or similar others (rather than different others). Taking the sec-
ond phase of the SCP process, the shift from the ‘content’ of terrorism, that
is, its perception as a personal crime risk, to the ‘effect’ phase, that is, the
development of negative affective, behavioral, and cognitive reactions to it,
will be related to the type of the construal of terrorism. The more low-level
(vs. high-level) the construal, that is, thinking about terrorism by focus-
ing, for example, on the consequences of the 9/11 attacks (rather than their
causes) and the modus operandi of the attackers (rather than their motives),
the more negative the reactions to the distal event of terrorism.1
Risk perception may be key to understanding how the mechanisms of psy-
chological distance and crime construal relate to emotional and behavioral
reactions to crime. If probability judgements strongly match on to the psy-
chological proximity to or distance from victimization threat (cf. Bar-Anan,
Liberman, & Trope, 2006; Todorov, Goren, & Trope, 2007; Trope et al.,
2007; Wakslak & Trope, 2009), then believing that one is likely to fall vic-
tim of crime (over the following 12 months, say) is to represent that event as
psychologically proximate on a number of different distance dimensions. To
believe that there is a high probability of falling victim of crime may thus be
to perceive the future uncertain event as psychologically proximate: it seems
real (so not hypothetical), closer in space (so likely to happen in the areas
one frequents rather than remote areas), closer in time (so likely to happen
sometime soon rather than in the distant future), and relevant to oneself (so
likely to happen to oneself and peers rather than different people). In turn,
the perceived likelihood of an uncertain negative event has been shown to be
a strong predictor of whether someone is fearful, worried, or anxious about
the event transpiring (Jackson & Gouseti, 2015; Jackson, 2011, 2013; Warr,
1987; cf. Berenbaum, 2010).
Finally, with psychological proximity comes low-level construal, CLT
predicts. Low-level construal of crime would involve less abstract and more
situated and contextualized representations that are specic to one’s more
immediate locality. People would represent crime not as something abstract
and general (that happens elsewhere, far from now, and to different people)
but, rather, as something specic that occurs in particular places and car-
ried out by particular types of people. With psychological proximity, this
may then encourage people to believe, for instance, individuals or groups
with particular characteristics as potentially dangerous and make people
feel unsafe. Low-level construal may, in other words, involve the risk of
crime being projected into one’s own environment, elaborated with a face
(the potential criminal) and a context (the potential crime scene).
A key process in fear of crime may be the evaluative activity that links
crime with individuals, groups, situations, environmental characteristics,
and/or past experiences that are judged by the observer to be (a) hostile to
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Construal-Level Theory and Fear of Crime 35
the local social order, (b) untrustworthy, (c) representative of some sort of
social breakdown, and (d) traumatizing. One’s psychological proximity to
and the level of detail in the mental representations of ‘crime signals’ will
relate, in turn, to affective and behavioral reactions to the personal risk of
victimization. The psychologically closer and the more detailed the constru-
als, we assume, the more intense and dysfunctional (Jackson & Gray, 2010)
the affective and behavioral reactions.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this chapter, we aimed to discuss fear of crime through the lens of the
construal level theory of psychological distance. The CLT approach to fear
of crime seeks to address two key research questions: (a) Does taking a
psychologically distant (vs. psychologically proximal) perspective to the dis-
tal event of crime ‘cool off’ (vs. intensify) negative reactions to the risk of
victimization? and (b) Does construing crime in a high-level, abstract man-
ner (rather than in a low-level, concrete manner) ‘cool off’ (vs. intensify)
individuals’ reactions to the risk of victimization?
A CLT approach to the fear of crime has important criminological and
policy implications. Theoretically, it provides a unifying perspective that can
help address some of the ‘paradoxical’ ndings of the research into fear of
crime. For example, seeing the ‘rationality/irrationality’ debate (Lupton &
Tulloch, 1999) through CLT lens provides new ways of looking at the ‘para-
dox’. The experiential distance from crime (i.e., not being a direct victim)
of some social groups (e.g., women) might make the nding of their higher
fear-of-crime levels seems incongruous, but CLT suggests that in expressing
reactions toward distal events, the psychological (rather than experiential)
distance from the event, and the event’s construal are the key mechanisms
(Trope & Liberman, 2010). For example, women’s experiential distance
from crime might be higher than that of men, but women might psychologi-
cally experience crime as more proximal than men do, and this proximity
might help explain the gender differences in fear of crime. Likewise, women
might be more likely to construe crime through a secondary, low-level lens
compared to men, and this might help explain the different levels of their
fear-of-crime reactions.
Methodologically, a CLT approach to fear of crime can expand crimi-
nological research in at least two ways. On one hand, a CLT approach to
fear of crime, as discussed earlier, is closely related to perspectives that draw
on social interactionism and semiotics, which, methodologically speaking,
relate to qualitative research. Qualitative work on fear of crime could ben-
et from the CLT ideas, by elaborating, for example, the notion of psy-
chological distance in ethnographic studies. Taking the example of prison
studies, where ethnography is a common methodological approach, a CLT
research question could be, ‘Do the power relations that exist in a prison
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36 Ioanna Gouseti and Jonathan Jackson
context affect the psychological distance of the social actors in the context,
and thus their reactions to the risk of crime?’ Based on CLT ndings that
higher power is related to psychological distance (Smith & Trope, 2006),
it might be that prison guards, who represent authority and are thus more
powerful than inmates in prison, are more psychologically distant from
crime, and thus, their fear-of-crime levels are lower than those of prisoners.
On the other hand, adopting the empirical paradigm of psychological work
on CLT opens up experimental avenues for criminological research, which
are not methodologically common in the eld of fear of crime. An example
of this research is to prime different groups of participants with high-level
and low-level crime-construal mind-sets, and then measure their psychologi-
cal distance from crime as well as their fear-of-crime reactions.
Finally, from a criminal policy perspective, we argue that the applica-
tion of CLT to fear of crime might play a role in increasing the possibility
of crime control politics that responds to public concerns by alternatives to
mass incarceration, zero tolerance, ‘tough on crime,’ and the like (Lee, 2008;
Sparks et al., 2001). By exploring the role of psychological distance from
crime and crime construals in shaping affective, behavioral, and cognitive
reactions to crime, we aim to detect narratives about crime that ‘cool off’
negative reactions to the risk of falling victim and those that contribute to
more functional fear-of-crime reactions. If this is achieved, then both crimi-
nal policy and public discourse about crime could benet from developing
information about the crime problem that keeps citizens informed in a func-
tional, rather than dysfunctional, way, and thus ‘far’ and ‘free from fear.’
NOTE
1 Taking into account the bidirectionality that, according to CLT, characterizes
the relationship between psychological distance from distal events and mental
construal of distal events (Trope & Liberman, 2010), the two mechanisms
could be used interchangeably in this account; that is, the shift from ‘expres-
sion’ to ‘content’ could also be related to the type of mental construal of the
crime event, and the shift from ‘content’ to ‘effect’ could be related to one’s
psychological distance from the crime risk.
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