What you hear shapes how you think: Sound patterns change level of construal

•Auditory cues related to distance and abstractness trigger abstract construal.•Auditory cues related to proximity and concreteness trigger concrete construal.•Distance/abstractness cues in sounds instigate the formation of broader categories.•Distance/abstractness cues increase preference for global visual patterns.•Also, these cues increase the weight placed on aggregate vs. single information.

Psychological distance and abstractness primes have been shown to increase one's level of construal. We tested the idea that auditory cues which are related to distance and abstractness (vs. proximity and concreteness) trigger abstract (vs. concrete) construal. Participants listened to musical sounds that varied in reverberation, novelty of harmonic modulation, and metrical segmentation. In line with the hypothesis, distance/abstractness cues in the sounds instigated the formation of broader categories, increased the preference for global as compared to local aspects of visual patterns, and caused participants to put more weight on aggregated than on individualized product evaluations. The relative influence of distance/abstractness cues in sounds, as well as broader implications of the findings for basic research and applied settings, is discussed.