First, this week, a quick mental experiment. The Australian city of Perth, by some definitions, is the most isolated on the planet, more than 1,300 miles from any other sizable town – which means it's probably a very long way from where you're reading this. (If you happen to be in Perth, just pick any other city; they're all a bloody long way off.) Now imagine learning that a resident of Perth has invented something clever: a running shoe that uses nanotechnology to adjust itself to the wearer's foot, reducing blisters. On a scale of one to 10, how creative does that sound to you?
Whatever your response, it's likely to be higher than if I'd told you the inventor lived down your street. Or that's the implication of a recent study by the US management scholar Jennifer Mueller and her colleagues, who concocted that shoe example. When an idea's presented as originating far away, they found, people picture it in the abstract: they grasp the gist, focus on the end goal, and appreciate the ingenuity. When it's described as coming from nearby, they zoom in on detailed practicalities, focus on means, not ends, and imagine all the potential problems. In short, if people aren't taking your ideas seriously, move to Perth. I went there once. Even if they still don't take you seriously, you can console yourself with the excellent seafood, craft beer and snorkelling opportunities.
Could this help explain that frustrating phenomenon whereby people in organisations can't get a fair hearing for their suggestions, but then, as soon as some outside consultant suggests the very same thing, the boss goes wild with enthusiasm? Then there are those people who can't hear advice from family or friends – yet if they find it in a book, or from some spiritual guru, they suddenly can't stop preaching it. In research, this imagined-distance effect crops up repeatedly. In one experiment, students in New York were asked to imagine helping a friend move apartments, either somewhere local, or in Los Angeles. When describing the actions involved, those contemplating a local move used more concrete language, such as "putting a key in a lock"; those picturing LA preferred more abstract terms, such as "securing the house".
People like to talk, vaguely, about the benefits of "getting some distance" on your problems: leaving your desk for a walk to figure out some challenge at work, or flying off to India to get over a break-up. But these findings suggest why this is good advice: that when we're imagining people and things as physically farther away, we see the salient features instead of distracting details, the forest instead of the trees. If, like me, you get all your best insights about life on trains and planes, perhaps that's because your life, at such times, is "far away" and "over there". From that distance, its basic contours are easily graspable; the people in it are little Playmobil figures. No wonder it all seems easier to get your mind around. The tricky part is integrating those insights into everyday existence once you're back in your life and it turns out the people weren't tiny after all. (I'm reminded of Father Ted, explaining perspective by means of small toy cows: "These are small; those are far away. Small… far away. Ah, forget it.")
Fascinating, right? Or at least it would have been if someone in Perth had written it.
oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com
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