Why People With an Eye Toward the Future Are More Moral: The Role of Abstract Thinking

Abstract

Why do future-oriented people show greater moral concern than present-oriented people? Consistent with construal level theory (CLT; Trope & Liberman, 2003), we find that future-oriented people construe morally relevant actions at a higher level of abstraction, which clarifies their larger implications. Moreover, we show that level of construal partially explains the relationship between individual differences in temporal orientation and moral judgments. These findings support CLT and contribute to our understanding of moral psychology, as they are the first to show how individual differences pertaining to psychological distance relate to abstract thinking and moral judgments.

Notes

¹Another popular individual difference measure of time-orientation is the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI; Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). Unlike the CFC-scale, which measures time perspective on a single continuum between present- and future-mindedness, the ZTPI contains two conceptually different subscales to measure a present-oriented time perspective: the Present-Fatalistic subscale and the Present Hedonistic subscale. Furthermore, the Present Fatalistic scale of the ZTPI also measures aspects (e.g., determinism) that go beyond time orientation. Because a fatalistic outlook on life has been found to be associated with less prosocial behavior (Baumeister, Masicampo, & DeWall, 2009), a negative correlation between this subscale and moral concern could be driven by either fatalistic beliefs or a present time-orientation. Thus, we decided to use the CFC scale, which we believe is a more straightforward, cleaner measure of time perspective that is more suitable in the context of our CLT-derived hypotheses.

²The full stimulus materials can be obtained from the authors upon request.