It's only a matter of time: death, legacies, and intergenerational decisions.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Intergenerational decisions affect other people in the future. The combination of intertemporal and interpersonal distance between decision makers in the present and other people in the future may lead one to expect little intergenerational generosity. In the experiments reported here, however, we posited that the negative effect of intertemporal distance on intergenerational beneficence would be reversed when people were primed with thoughts of death. This reversal would occur because death priming leads individuals to be concerned with having a lasting impact on other people in the future. Our experiments show that when individuals are exposed to death priming, the expected tendency to allocate fewer resources to others in the future, as compared with others in the present, is reversed. Our findings suggest that legacy motivations triggered by death priming can trump intergenerational discounting tendencies and promote intergenerational beneficence.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Wade-Benzoni, KA; Tost, LP; Hernandez, M; Larrick, RP
Published Date
- July 2012
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 23 / 7
Start / End Page
- 704 - 709
PubMed ID
- 22692338
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1467-9280
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0956-7976
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1177/0956797612443967
Language
- eng