The principle of impartial beneficence (IB) holds that we should strive to maximize others’ well-being regardless of their relationship to us. But does endorsement of IB in principle translate to more uniform concern for others irrespective of relationship type? Three pre-registered studies in online samples of U.S. participants (total N=1,716) found IB endorsement predicts greater and more uniform concern for others across social relationships varying in social distance: in care prescriptions (Study 1), as well as blame judgments (Study 2) and guilt expressions (Study 3) when care norms are violated or care is not provided. Heightened concern for others in socially distant relationships was not “offset” by less concern for those in close ones. IB was not associated with a motive to be generally admired, but was linked to a motive to form communal relationships. Across different types of moral judgments, a commitment to IB thus entails caring much more than average about the well-being of socially distant others, while maintaining a high level of concern for socially close ones.
AmorminoP.KagelA.LiJ.MarshA. A. (2024). Close relationship partners of impartial altruists do not report diminished relationship quality and are similarly altruistic. Communications Psychology, 2, Article 128. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00181-7
2.
AmorminoP.PloeM. L.MarshA. A. (2022). Moral foundations, values, and judgments in extraordinary altruists. Scientific Reports, 12(22111), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26418-1
BostynD. H.ChandrashekarS. P.RoetsA. (2023). Deontologists are not always trusted over utilitarians: Revisiting inferences of trustworthiness from moral judgments. Scientific Reports, 13(1665), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-27943-3
6.
BuchananA. E. (1982). Philosophical foundations of beneficence. In ShelpE. E. (Ed.), Beneficence and health care (pp. 33–62). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-7769-3_2
7.
BurkeE. (1901). The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke (Vols. 12). Little, Brown and Co.
8.
ClarkM. S.EarpB. D.CrockettM. J. (2020). Who are “we” and why are we cooperating? Insights from social psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43(e66), 21–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19002528
9.
ClarkM. S.MillsJ. (1993). The difference between communal and exchange relationships: What it is and is not. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19(6), 684–691. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167293196003
10.
ClarkM. S.MillsJ. R. (1979). Interpersonal attraction in communal and exchange relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(1), 12–24.
11.
ClarkM. S.MillsJ. R. (2012). A theory of communal (and exchange) relationships. In LangeP. A. M. V.KruglanskiA. W.HigginsE. T. (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology: Volume two (pp. 232–250). Sage.
12.
CrimstonC. R.BainP. G.HornseyM. J.BastianB. (2016). Moral expansiveness: Examining variability in the extension of the moral world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(4), 636–653. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000086
13.
CurryO. S.MullinsD. A.WhitehouseH. (2019). Is it good to cooperate? Testing the theory of morality-as-cooperation in 60 societies. Current Anthropology, 60(1), 47–69. https://doi.org/10.1086/701478
14.
DickensC. (1853). Bleak house. Chapman and Hall.
15.
EarpB. D. (2021). Relational morality [Doctoral Dissertation]. Yale University.
16.
EarpB. D.CalcottR.ReineckeM. G.EverettJ. A. C. (2024). Relational morality in psychology and philosophy: Past, present, and future. In LahamS. (Ed.), Handbook of ethics and social psychology. Edward Elgar. https://www.academia.edu/124255281
EarpB. D.McLoughlinK.MonradJ.ClarkM. S.CrockettM. (2021). How social relationships shape moral wrongness judgments. Nature Communications, 12(5776), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26067-4
19.
EarpB. D.SavulescuJ. (2020). What is love? Can it be chemically modified? Should it be?Philosophy and Public Issues, 10(2), 93–125.
20.
EnkeB.Rodríguez-PadillaR.ZimmermannF. (2022). Moral universalism: Measurement and economic relevance. Management Science, 68(5), 3590–3603. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4086
21.
EverettJ. A. C.FaberN. S.SavulescuJ.CrockettM. J. (2018). The costs of being consequentialist: Social inference from instrumental harm and impartial beneficence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 79, 200–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.07.004
22.
FarmerA.KidwellB.HardestyD. M. (2020). Helping a few a lot or many a little: Political ideology and charitable giving. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 30(4), 614–630. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1164
23.
FiskeA. P. (1992). The four elementary forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations. Psychological Review, 99(4), 689–723. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.99.4.689
FowlerZ.LawK. F.GaesserB. (2021). Against empathy bias: The moral value of equitable empathy. Psychological Science, 32(5), 766–779. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620979965
26.
GallusJ.ReiffJ.KamenicaE.FiskeA. P. (2021). Relational incentives theory. Psychological Review, online ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000336
27.
GileadM.DavidY. B.EckerY. (2018). Not our fault: Judgments of apathy versus harm toward socially proximal versus distant others. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(5), 568–575. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617714583
28.
HillP. F.YiR.SprengR. N.DianaR. A. (2017). Neural congruence between intertemporal and interpersonal self-control: Evidence from delay and social discounting. NeuroImage, 162, 186–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.08.071
29.
HirschJ. L.ClarkM. S. (2019). Multiple paths to belonging that we should study together. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(2), 238–255. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691618803629
KahaneG.EverettJ. A. C.EarpB. D.CaviolaL.FaberN. S.CrockettM. J.SavulescuJ. (2018). Beyond sacrificial harm: A two-dimensional model of utilitarian psychology. Psychological Review, 125(2), 131–164. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000093
32.
LawK. F.CampbellD.GaesserB. (2022). Biased benevolence: The perceived morality of effective altruism across social distance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 48(3), 426–444. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167221100277
33.
LawK. F.SyropoulosS.YoungL.O’ConnorB. B. (2024). What we owe the present: The perceived morality of longtermism and helping distant future people. https://osf.io/scngu/
34.
LeeJ.HolyoakK. J. (2020). “But he’s my brother”: The impact of family obligation on moral judgments and decisions. Memory & Cognition, 48(1), 158–170. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-00969-7
35.
MammenM.KöymenB.TomaselloM. (2021). Young children’s moral judgments depend on the social relationship between agents. Cognitive Development, 57(100973), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.100973
36.
MarshallJ.GollwitzerA.Mermin-BunnellK.ShinomiyaM.RetelsdorfJ.BloomP. (2022). How development and culture shape intuitions about prosocial obligations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151, 1866–1882. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001136
37.
MarshallJ.WynnK.BloomP. (2020). Do children and adults take social relationship into account when evaluating people’s actions?Child Development, 91(5), e1082–e1100. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13390
38.
McGrawA. P.TetlockP. E. (2005). Taboo trade-offs, relational framing, and the acceptability of exchanges. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15(1), 2–15. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327663jcp1501_2
39.
McManusR. M.Kleiman-WeinerM.YoungL. (2020). What we owe to family: The impact of special obligations on moral judgment. Psychological Science, 31(3), 227–242. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619900321
40.
McManusR. M.MasonJ. E.YoungL. (2021). Re-examining the role of family relationships in structuring perceived helping obligations, and their impact on moral evaluation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 96, 104182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104182
41.
MihailovE. (2023). Measuring impartial beneficence: A Kantian perspective on the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 14, 989–1004. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00600-2
42.
MillJ. S. (1863). Utilitarianism. Parker, Son and Bourn.
MitchellW. J. T. (1990). Influence, autobiography, and literary history: Rousseau’s “Confessions” and Wordsworth’s “The Prelude.”ELH, 57(3), 643–664. https://doi.org/10.2307/2873236
46.
NeldnerK.CrimstonC.WilksM.RedshawJ.NielsenM. (2018). The developmental origins of moral concern: An examination of moral boundary decision making throughout childhood. PLOS ONE, 13(5), Article e0197819. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197819
47.
NeldnerK.WilksM.CrimstonC. R.JaymesR. W. M.NielsenM. (2023). I maynot like you, but I still care: Children differentiate moral concern from other constructs. Developmental Psychology, 59(3), 549–566. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001485
48.
ReedN.HirschJ.HopkinsA.AlamdeenY.GendronM.ClarkM. S. (2025). Measuring two ways of striving to belong and assessing whether each leads to achieved belonging (Submitted).
RottmanJ.CrimstonC. R.SyropoulosS. (2021). Tree-huggers versus human-lovers: Anthropomorphism and dehumanization predict valuing nature over outgroups. Cognitive Science, 45(4), Article e12967. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12967
51.
SidgwickH. (1874). The methods of ethics (7th ed.). Hackett.
52.
SimpsonA.LahamS. M. (2015). Individual differences in relational construal are associated with variability in moral judgment. Personality and Individual Differences, 74, 49–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.09.044
53.
SimpsonA.LahamS. M.FiskeA. P. (2016). Wrongness in different relationships: Relational context effects on moral judgment. The Journal of Social Psychology, 156(6), 594–609. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2016.1140118
54.
TuenY. J.BulleyA.PalomboD. J.O’ConnorB. B. (2023). Social value at a distance: Higher identification with all of humanity is associated with reduced social discounting. Cognition, 230(105283), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105283
55.
WaytzA.IyerR.YoungL.HaidtJ.GrahamJ. (2019). Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle. Nature Communications, 10(4389), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12227-0
56.
WilliamsonG. M.ClarkM. S.PegalisL. J.BehanA. (1996). Affective consequences of refusing to help in communal and exchange relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(1), 34–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167296221004
