Promoting prosociality toward future generations by tailoring to group-based social preferences

Abstract

Promoting prosocial behavior toward future generations is crucial to combat societal challenges such as climate change and the depletion of natural resources. Here, we invoke a social dilemma lens to predict and promote future-oriented prosociality in four preregistered online experiments (total N = 2407). Integrating research on temporal preferences with research on social preferences, we show that (i) individuals are willing to make self-costly contributions to future beneficiaries without personal return on investment; (ii) universally prosocial preferences predict such future-oriented prosociality most strongly, and (iii) individuals with weakly or strongly parochial preferences can also be motivated toward future-oriented prosociality if the future beneficiary of their contributions is aligned with their social preferences, i.e., when the future beneficiary is part of an in-group. This is true for both minimal groups (Studies 2–3) and real-world groups (Study 4). Our findings suggest that policies aimed at promoting people's future-oriented prosociality could be made more effective by tailoring to the beneficiary of their prosociality in the future.