Editing Social distance (section)

== Theoretical implications ==

=== Psychological distance ===
Some researchers have examined social distance as a form of [[psychological distance]].<ref name=":15"/><ref name=":7">{{Cite journal|last1=Stephan|first1=Elena|last2=Liberman|first2=Nira|last3=Trope|first3=Yaacov|date=2010|title=Politeness and psychological distance: A construal level perspective.|url= |journal=Journal of Personality and Social Psychology|volume=98|issue=2|pages=268–280|doi=10.1037/a0016960|pmid=20085400|pmc=3193988|issn=1939-1315}}</ref><ref name=":43">{{Cite journal|last1=Magee|first1=Joe C.|last2=Smith|first2=Pamela K.|date=2013-01-24|title=The Social Distance Theory of Power|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868312472732|journal=Personality and Social Psychology Review|volume=17|issue=2|pages=158–186|doi=10.1177/1088868312472732|issn=1088-8683|pmid=23348983|s2cid=40262039|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Research in this vein has drawn connections between social distance, other kinds of psychological distance (such as temporal distance).<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal|last1=Stephan|first1=Elena|last2=Liberman|first2=Nira|last3=Trope|first3=Yaacov|date=March 2011|title=The effects of time perspective and level of construal on social distance|url= |journal=Journal of Experimental Social Psychology|volume=47|issue=2|pages=397–402|doi=10.1016/j.jesp.2010.11.001|pmid=21836728|pmc=3153444|issn=0022-1031}}</ref><ref name=":7"/> This type of work also examined the effect of social distance on [[Construal level theory|construal levels]], suggesting that greater social distance promotes high-level and increase cognitive abstraction.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" />

In speeded decision making tasks, studies have suggested a systematic relationship between social distance and physical distance. When asked to either indicate the spatial location of a presented word or verify a word's presence, people respond more quickly when "we" was displayed in a spatially proximate versus spatially distant location and when "others" was displayed in a
spatially distant versus a spatially proximate location.<ref>Bar-Anan, Y., Liberman, N., Trope, Y., & Algom, D. (2007). Automatic processing of psychological distance: Evidence from a Stroop task. ''Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136,'' 610–622.</ref> This suggests that social distance and physical distance are conceptually related.

Route planning exercises have also hinted at a conceptual link between social distance and physical distance. When asked to draw a route on a map, people tend to draw routes closer to friends they pass along the way and further away from strangers.<ref>Matthews, J.L. & Matlock, T. (2011). Understanding the link between spatial distance and social distance. ''Social Psychology, 42'', 185–192. {{doi|10.1027/1864-9335/a000062}}</ref> This effect is robust even after controlling for how easy it is for the people passing one another to communicate.

There is some evidence that reasoning about social distance and physical distance draw on shared processing resources in the human parietal cortex.<ref>Yamakawa, Y., Kanai, R., Matsumura, M., & Naito, E. (2009). Social distance evaluation in human parietal cortex. PLoS ONE, 4(2): e4360. {{doi|10.1371/journal.pone.0004360}}</ref>