WITHDRAWN: Consequences are far away: Psychological distance affects modes of moral decision making

Much of the work on deontological and consequentialist moral choices assumes that these modes of decision making are rooted in individual differences or cognitive capacities. We examine the idea that whether a person focuses on actions or outcomes while making moral choices depends on the psychological distance from the moral situation. When the situation is perceived as far off, whether in time or space, consequentialist considerations loom larger. In the first four studies in this paper, we establish that psychological distance from an event decreases deontological judgments and increases consequentialist choices. This effect holds across two distinct paradigms. Finally, in Experiment 5 we use Construal Level Theory to suggest that deontology and consequentialist reasoning may be linked to how information is represented at near and far distances. This work implies that decision makers have several distinct strategies when making moral choices but the selection of those strategies is far from fixed, and may depend on factors such as psychological distance.