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The Influence of Temporal and Spatial Distance on Moral Judgment and Decision Making

Agerström, Jens LU ; Björklund, Fredrik LU orcid and Allwood, Carl Martin LU (2007) The 8th Annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference p.138-138
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; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to conference
publication status
published
subject
pages
138 - 138
conference name
The 8th Annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference
conference location
Memphis, Tennessee, United States
conference dates
2007-01-25 - 2007-01-27
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether changes in the temporal and spatial context of a moral dilemma affect how it is perceived and subsequently resolved. According to Construal Level Theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003), psychologically distant information is perceived as more abstract than psychologically proximal information. Thus, the relative weight of abstract justice considerations should increase and the relative weight of concrete care considerations should decrease with temporal and spatial distance. Undergraduates were presented with a number of vignettes in which temporal (experiment 1) and spatial distance (experiment 2) was manipulated in a between-subjects design. Temporal distance was found to increase the relative weight of justice and decrease the relative weight of care. In addition, gender moderated this effect, with females’ morality being more susceptible to temporal distance than males’ morality. Females were more justice-oriented and judged moral transgressions as being more severe in the distant future than in the near future, whereas males showed no such change. Moreover, gender differences appeared only in the distant future, where males were more concerned with care and females more with justice. Spatial distance, however, had no effect on moral judgment or reasoning. These results show that our moral priorities are affected by temporal distance and that temporal distance can help us understand the contextual nature of moral judgment and reasoning. The results also raise questions whether temporal distance may induce more abstraction than spatial distance, and whether temporal distance exerts different effects on males’ and females’ morality.
id
dcbf71a6-adc7-4f7d-bcac-d242716b1e78 (old id 925093)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 11:29:40
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:31:19
@misc{dcbf71a6-adc7-4f7d-bcac-d242716b1e78,
  author       = {{Agerström, Jens and Björklund, Fredrik and Allwood, Carl Martin}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{138--138}},
  title        = {{The Influence of Temporal and Spatial Distance on Moral Judgment and Decision Making}},
  year         = {{2007}},
}