Intertemporal Empathy Decline: Feeling Less Distress for Future Others' Suffering

The present actions of individuals and society at large can cause outsized consequences on future generations' quality of life. Moral philosophers have explored how people should value the well-being of future generations. Yet, the question of how people actually feel when considering the plight of others in the future compared to the present remains understudied. In four experiments (N = 4,698), we demonstrate evidence of an intertemporal empathy decline such that people feel less empathy toward another person's suffering in the future compared to the present (Studies 1-4) despite predicting that the same amount of pain would be felt (Studies 1-2). Despite this, imagining another person's suffering in the future leads to placing greater value on future generations' welfare (Study 2). We also show that this intertemporal empathy decline reduces the amount people donate to a future-oriented versus present-oriented charity of the same type (Study 3). Finally, we find that prompting people to more vividly imagine another person's future suffering attenuates the decline in intertemporal empathy (Study 4). Together, this research identifies empathy as a present-biased psychological obstacle impeding future-oriented prosocial behavior.