Temporal Distance and Moral Concerns: Future Morally Questionable Behavior is Perceived as More Wrong and Evokes Stronger Prosocial Intentions

Prior research on temporal construal has shown that core values become more salient when people think about distant- as compared to near-future events. The present research shows that greater temporal distance of an event also results in greater moral concern. More specifically, it was found that pe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Basic and applied social psychology 2009-01, Vol.31 (1), p.49-59
Main Authors: Agerstrom, Jens, Bjorklund, Fredrik
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attributional bias
Behavior
Biological and medical sciences
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Future orientation
Judgment
Moral judgments
Morality
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psykologi
Social attribution, perception and cognition
Social psychology
Temporal aspects
Time perspectives
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Summary:Prior research on temporal construal has shown that core values become more salient when people think about distant- as compared to near-future events. The present research shows that greater temporal distance of an event also results in greater moral concern. More specifically, it was found that people make harsher moral judgments of others' distant-future morally questionable behavior than near-future morally questionable behavior. Moreover, it was shown that people increasingly attribute distant vs. near future behavior to abstract dispositional relative to concrete situational causes, and that this attribution bias is partially responsible for the temporal distance effect on moral judgments.
ISSN:0197-3533
1532-4834
1532-4834
DOI:10.1080/01973530802659885