Moral Future-Thinking: Does the Moral Circle Stand the Test of Time?

Abstract

The long-term collective welfare of humanity may lie in the hands of those who are presently living. But do people normatively include future generations in their moral circles? Across four studies conducted on Prolific Academic (NTotal=823), we find evidence for a progressive decline in the subjective moral standing of future generations, demonstrating decreasing perceived moral obligation, moral concern, and prosocial intentions towards other people with increasing temporal distance. While participants generally tend to display present-oriented moral preferences, we also reveal individual differences that mitigate this tendency and predict pro-future outcomes, including individual variation in longtermism beliefs and the vividness of one’s imagination. Our studies reconcile conflicting evidence in the extant literature on moral judgment and future-thinking, shed light on the role of temporal distance in moral circle expansion, and offer practical implications for better valuing and safeguarding the shared future of humanity.

What We Owe the Present: The Perceived Morality of Longtermism and Helping Distant Future People

“…Our findings resonate with recent research on the psychology of effective altruism indicating moral and social judgments tend to become more negative with increasing donorrecipient social distance (Law et al, 2023). Expanding upon this work, we demonstrate similar effects for longtermism across temporal distance.…”

“…This effect suggests that moral judgments made by individuals with lower or closer to average levels of intergenerational concern are more sensitive to differences in timeframe compared to those with exceptionally high levels. These results are consistent with prior research suggesting that individuals with greater concern for welfare in the far future show markedly reduced tendencies to discount the subjective value of human welfare as a function of intergenerational distance (Law et al, 2023;Syropoulos et al, 2024a). Moreover, these findings imply that moral intuitions regarding impartial intergenerational beneficence are a critical component of the impartial intergenerational concern advocated within longtermism.…”

“…Second, moral judgments may differ when tradeoffs aren't made explicit and participants consider intergenerational beneficence in isolation. Ironically, longtermist arguments for equitably valuing future and present welfare focus attention on these tradeoffs, and may serve to decrease rather than increase engagement in future-oriented collective action (e.g., Law et al, 2022Law et al, , 2023. Finally, we invite research to explore the robustness of our findings outside the U.S., as moral judgments of intergenerational concern may be more positive in societies with collectivist or long-term oriented cultures (Hofstede, 2011).…”

Cross-Cultural Insights into Moral Expansiveness: Selective Valuation of Nature Versus Humans

“…The framework of the expanding moral circle has been adapted by psychologists to model the continuum of moral rights people ascribe to human and non-human entities beyond the self 4,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14] . Through the use of metrics like the Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES 9,15,16 ) and a moral allocation task 4,14 , researchers have mapped variation in the size of individuals' moral circles to robustly predict a host of prosocial humanitarian (e.g., a sense of identification with all of humanity, universalism, donations, self-sacrifice for humans, perspective taking and empathetic concern) and proenvironmental (e.g., connectedness to nature, willingness to sacrifice for non-human agents, mind perceptions for animals) attitudes and actions.…”

“…Through the use of metrics like the Moral Expansiveness Scale (MES 9,15,16 ) and a moral allocation task 4,14 , researchers have mapped variation in the size of individuals' moral circles to robustly predict a host of prosocial humanitarian (e.g., a sense of identification with all of humanity, universalism, donations, self-sacrifice for humans, perspective taking and empathetic concern) and proenvironmental (e.g., connectedness to nature, willingness to sacrifice for non-human agents, mind perceptions for animals) attitudes and actions. Additional research has examined the antecedents of expansive moral concern, suggesting that awe 17 , compassion 18,19 , liberal political ideology 4,14 , and intergenerational valuation 10,12 predict larger and more diverse/inclusive moral circles. In contrast, cross-national research suggests that low levels of generalized trust, perceived deterioration of the social fabric of society, and greater perceived economic inequality predict smaller and more constrained moral circles 20 .…”