Social discounting outpredicts temporal discounting in intergenerational judgment: A many labs investigation

Many current issues (e.g., climate change) plausibly also affect future generations, but research suggests that people are less concerned about the well-being of future humans. Future humans are temporally, but also socially distant. We tested whether intergenerational judgment tracks more closely with temporal discounting or social discounting. In a preregistered study, N=5,801 undergraduate participants from 35 universities across 12 countries completed measures of social discounting, temporal discounting, intergenerational discounting, and intergenerational concern. Lower social and temporal discounting each predicted less intergenerational discounting and greater intergenerational concern, although, social discounting emerged as the stronger predictor. Exploratory analyses showed a social-by-temporal discounting interaction for intergenerational discounting. Participants who extend strong, temporally-invariant concern to future generations also showed less discounting across intergenerational but also social and temporal domains. The overall pattern generalized across preregistered secondary discounting metrics. These findings suggest that concern for future generations reflects both intertemporal and interpersonal valuation.