Law Kyle Fiore, Syropoulos Stylianos, O'Connor Brendan Bo, Young Liane
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA.
Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2024 Dec 16:1461672241303993. doi: 10.1177/01461672241303993.
Is the certainty of saving a life today worth more than the less-certain possibility of saving 10 lives tomorrow? In six pre-registered studies with U.S. samples from Prolific ( = 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 1-2b). Experimental evidence (Studies 3a-4) suggests that certainty perceptions drive intergenerational concern, rather than the inverse. Drawing upon seminal research from cognitive science and behavioral economics, these findings address gaps in emerging social psychological inquiry into long-term intergenerational concern, shed light on mechanisms underlying debates on the ethical philosophy of longtermism, and highlight practical implications for decision-makers, stressing the need to increase certainty perceptions surrounding about pro-future actions to enhance intergenerational beneficence.
今天挽救一条生命的确定性是否比明天挽救十条生命的不确定性更高的可能性更有价值？在六项对来自Prolific的美国样本（n = 5,095）进行预注册的研究中，我们采用了代际概率贴现任务，发现随着不确定性和与当前的代际距离增加，人们会低估生命的价值。具体而言，随着影响未来的不确定性增加，个体越来越优先考虑挽救较少的当前生命而非更多的未来生命，尤其是对于更遥远未来的受益者（研究1 - 2b）。实验证据（研究3a - 4）表明，确定性认知驱动代际关怀，而非相反。借鉴认知科学和行为经济学的开创性研究，这些发现填补了新兴社会心理学对长期代际关怀研究的空白，揭示了长期主义伦理哲学辩论背后的机制，并强调了对决策者的实际影响，强调需要提高围绕有利于未来行动的确定性认知，以增强代际善举。
