Future self-perceptions seem to promote far-sighted decisions in intertemporal choices. Previous work suggested that future self-relatedness, the extent to which we feel similar and connected to our future self, is associated with moral concerns. We aimed to extend these findings to everyday moral judgments and behavior using experience sampling methods. In addition, we assessed how moral foundation concerns mediate the relationship between future self-relatedness and moral behavior. Participants (N = 151) reported their state-levels of future self-relatedness, individualizing, and binding moral foundations and answered whether they performed a moral action five times a day for seven days. Within- and between-participants future self-relatedness predicted daily fluctuations in individualizing and binding moral foundations concerns. On the behavioral level, only within-participants future self-relatedness predicted individualizing moral actions with individualizing moral foundations mediating this effect. Our findings suggest that within- and between-person changes in future self-relatedness might be used to predict everyday moral concerns and behavior.

A growing body of work has highlighted the importance of political beliefs and attitudes in predicting endorsement and engagement in prosocial behavior. Individuals with right-wing political orientation are less likely to behave prosocially than their left-wing counterparts due to high levels of Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). Here, we aimed to extend prior work by testing how political values relate to COVID-19 discretionary behavioral intentions (i.e., prosocial and non-mandatory behaviors aimed at controlling the spread of the pandemic). Furthermore, we tested whether identification with the national group would influence the relationship between RWA and prosocial behavior. A cross-sectional study conducted on 350 Italian participants showed that right-wing political orientation had a negative effect on COVID-19 discretionary behavioral intentions via RWA. Furthermore, a moderated mediation model revealed that this effect was only significant for participants who are lowly identified with the national group. The results suggest that highlighting group belongingness might effectively motivate more conservative individuals to engage in prosocial behavior.

The failure to engage in responsible behaviour is related to the inability to consider future consequences of actions. An experiment was conducted to examine whetherincreasing the vividness of the future self affects adherence and endorsement of COVID-19 safety measures. A total of 184 participants were randomly assigned to 3 groups. Depending on the experimental condition, they were tasked with writing a letter to other people (their friend), a proximal future self, and a distant future self. Participants in the distant future self and the other people conditions showed greater adherence intentions than proximal future self participants. No differences were found between the distant future self and the other people group. Further group differences were found in the endorsement of safety measures, with the distant-future self-group showing more condemnation than the other two groups. Commitment to the COVID-19 safety measures mediated the group differences on both dependent variables. The results are discussed within the framework of the Construal Level Theory and the Future Self-continuity model.

The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals’ well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled. Importantly, the required behaviors are aimed not only at safeguarding one’s own health. Instead, individuals are asked to adapt their behaviors to protect the community at large. This raises the question of which social concerns and moral principles make people willing to do so. We considered in 23 countries (N = 6948) individuals’ willingness to engage in prescribed and discretionary behaviors, as well as country-level and individual-level factors that might drive such behavioral intentions. Results from multilevel multiple regressions, with country as the nesting variable, showed that publicized number of infections were not significantly related to individual intentions to comply with the prescribed measures and intentions to engage in discretionary prosocial behaviors. Instead, psychological differences in terms of trust in government, citizens, and in particular toward science predicted individuals’ behavioral intentions across countries. The more people endorsed moral principles of fairness and care (vs. loyalty and authority), the more they were inclined to report trust in science, which, in turn, statistically predicted prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions. Results have implications for the type of intervention and public communication strategies that should be most effective to induce the behavioral changes that are needed to control the COVID-19 outbreak.