title: There Are Many Ways to See the Forest for the Trees: A Tour Guide for Abstraction.
abstract: Abstraction is a useful process for broadening mental horizons, integrating new experiences, and communicating information to others. Much attention has been directed at identifying the causes and consequences of abstraction across the subdisciplines of psychology. Despite this attention, an integrative review of the methods that are used for studying abstraction is missing from the literature. The current article aims to fill this gap in several ways. First, we highlight the different ways in which abstraction has been defined in the literature and then suggest an integrative definition. Second, we provide a tour of the different ways abstraction has been manipulated and measured over the years. Finally, we highlight considerations for researchers in choosing methods for their own research.
authors.affiliation: University of Texas at Austin.
authors.forename: Erin M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Burgoon
authors.affiliation: University of Texas at Austin erin.burgoon@gmail.com marlone.henderson@utexas.edu.
authors.forename: Marlone D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Henderson
authors.affiliation: University of Texas at Austin.
authors.forename: Arthur B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Markman
keywords: abstraction; concreteness; construal; general; gist; global; representation; specificity