The Probabilistic Price of Life Across Time: Generational and Probabilistic Distance Render a Life Today Worth More than Ten Tomorrow

Abstract

Is the certainty of saving a life today worth more than the less-certain outcome of saving 10 lives tomorrow? In six pre-registered studies with US samples from Prolific (N = 5,095), we employed an intergenerational probability discounting task, discovering people discount the value of life as uncertainty and intergenerational distance from the present increase. Specifically, as uncertainty about impacting the future rises, individuals increasingly prioritize saving fewer present lives over more future lives, particularly for more distant future beneficiaries (Studies 1-2). Experimental evidence (Studies 3-4) suggests that certainty perceptions drive intergenerational concern, rather than the reverse. Drawing upon seminal research from cognitive science and behavioral economics, these findings address gaps in emerging social psychological inquiry into long-term intergenerational concern, reconcile debates on the ethical philosophy of longtermism, and offer practical implications for decision-makers in public policy, emphasizing the need to balance hypothetical threats to society’s future with its present-day needs.

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

“…, episodic future thinking(O'Connor & Fowler, 2023), intergenerational concern(Law et al, 2024), and behavioral economics (Wade-Benzoni & Tost, 2009) may lend insight. Broadly, these literatures suggest numerous candidate mechanisms may impact moral and social judgments of longtermism, including parochial bias, scope insensitivity, imaginative vividness, and perceived uncertainty.…”