Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

When in time do people stop judging past actions by today's moral standards? Across two experiments, we tested whether and how time—ranging from today to medieval times—affects moral condemnation. In Experiment 1, we found that as temporal distance increased, blameworthiness decreased, and participants were less likely to say their moral standards applied. However, actions high in harmfulness (e.g., sexual assault) showed attenuated discounting rates. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings to investigate the role of harmfulness and knowledge in shaping these judgments. We found that beliefs about what someone from the past could have known help to explain blameworthiness and whether people decide to apply their current moral standards. We also found that harmfulness moderates these effects. Together, the results suggest both harmfulness and beliefs about knowledge shape when in time, and whether, people feel their current moral standards no longer apply.