Inoue Yukako, Mifune Nobuhiro, Saijo Tatsuyoshi
Research Institute for Future Design, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi, Japan.
School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 24;13:895619. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.895619. eCollection 2022.
Recently, altruism toward future generations (future altruism) has become a hot research topic. Although future altruism has been observed in several previous experiments, it is not yet clear when and why people are more likely to engage in future altruism. Drawing upon the empirical literature of reputation and cooperation, we predicted that future altruism brings reputational disadvantages. Accordingly, we investigated whether future altruism was evaluated positively or negatively by others in the current generation in two vignette studies (total = 1,237). Contrary to our initial prediction, we found that future altruism was positively evaluated even when it decreased the payoff of the members of the current generation. The difference in the evaluation of future altruism, as opposed to unsustainable current-generation focused behavior, was most pronounced when people do not know how a future altruist allocates rewards among individuals in the current generation. However, the positive evaluation of future altruism did not stem from the expectation that future altruists would also be altruistic toward the current generation. These results indicated that reputational benefits (i.e., positive reputation from others in the current generation) promote future altruism.
最近，对后代的利他主义（未来利他主义）已成为一个热门研究话题。尽管在之前的一些实验中已经观察到未来利他主义，但人们何时以及为何更有可能表现出未来利他主义尚不清楚。借鉴声誉和合作的实证文献，我们预测未来利他主义会带来声誉上的不利影响。因此，我们在两项情景研究（共1237人）中调查了当代人对未来利他主义的评价是积极还是消极。与我们最初的预测相反，我们发现即使未来利他主义降低了当代成员的收益，它仍得到了积极评价。当人们不知道未来利他主义者如何在当代个体之间分配奖励时，与不可持续的当代聚焦行为相比，对未来利他主义评价的差异最为明显。然而，对未来利他主义的积极评价并非源于期望未来利他主义者也会对当代人表现出利他行为。这些结果表明，声誉利益（即当代人给予的积极声誉）促进了未来利他主义。
