This research explored how social distance affects risk
preference in the life-saving domain. We found that decisionmakers
tend to be more risk-seeking when the lives of close
others versus distant others are at stake. By analyzing the
shape of value function, we showed that the underlying
mechanism for this difference in risk attitude might be that
decision-makers engage in feeling-based evaluation when
close others’ lives are at stake but calculation-based
evaluation when distant others’ lives are at stake
