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Linguistic Concreteness of Statements of True and False Intentions: A Mega-Analysis
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Description: The current study applies Construal level theory (CLT) to deception contexts. CLT suggests that the more distant something is perceived to be, the more abstractly it will be mentally represented. Of particular interest for our purposes is the finding that likely (vs. unlikely) future events are mentally represented at a more concrete (vs. abstract) level than unlikely (vs. likely) events. We predict that truths about future actions (so called true intentions) are expressed more concretely than lies about future actions (so called false intentions). This is due to the fact that true (vs. false) intentions refer to liklely (vs. unlikley) future events.