Brendan Bo O’Connor
Biographic Data
| ID | 8668193 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brendan Bo O’Connor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brendan Bo |
| FAMILY NAME | O’Connor |
| SIGNATURE | O’CONNOR B B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Psychology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5989-1632 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Moral Future-Thinking
Humanity’s long-term welfare may lie in the hands of those who are presently living, raising the question of whether people today hold the generations of tomorrow in their moral circles. Five studies (N Total = 1652; Prolific) reveal present-oriented bias in the moral standing of future generations, with greater perceived moral obligation, moral concern, and prosocial intentions for proximal relative to distal future targets. Yet, present-oriente…
The Probabilistic Price of Life Across Time
Is the certainty of saving a life today worth more than the less-certain possibility of saving 10 lives tomorrow? In six pre-registered studies with U.S. samples from Prolific ( N = 5,095), we employed an intergenerational probability discounting task, discovering people discount the value of life as uncertainty and intergenerational distance from the present increase. Specifically, as uncertainty about impacting the future rises, individuals inc…
Social value at a distance
From memory to motivation
Research has documented a strong link between constructing episodic simulations -vivid imaginations of specific events-and empathy. To date, most studies have used episodic simulations of helping someone to facilitate affective empathy and promote helping intentions, but have not studied how episodic simulations of another's distressing situation affect empathy. Moreover, affective empathy encompasses both personal distress (i.e., an egocentric e…
Biased Benevolence
Is altruism always morally good, or is the morality of altruism fundamentally shaped by the social opportunity costs that often accompany helping decisions? Across four studies, we reveal that in cases of realistic tradeoffs in social distance for gains in welfare where helping socially distant others necessitates not helping socially closer others with the same resources, helping is deemed as less morally acceptable. Making helping decisions at …
I remember therefore I am
The role of episodic simulation in motivating commonplace harms
Emotion in imaginative resistance
Imaginative resistance refers to cases in which one’s otherwise flexible imaginative capacity is constrained by an unwillingness or inability to imaginatively engage with a given claim. In three studies, we explored which specific imaginative demands engender resistance when imagining morally deviant worlds and whether individual differences in emotion predict the degree of this resistance. In Study 1 (N = 176), participants resisted the notion t…
Activating episodic simulation increases affective empathy
No prominent works on this page.
Emotion in imaginative resistance
Imaginative resistance refers to cases in which one’s otherwise flexible imaginative capacity is constrained by an unwillingness or inability to imaginatively engage with a given claim. In three studies, we explored which specific imaginative demands engender resistance when imagining morally deviant worlds and whether individual differences in emotion predict the degree of this resistance. In Study 1 (N = 176), participants resisted the notion t…
Activating episodic simulation increases affective empathy
Biased Benevolence
Is altruism always morally good, or is the morality of altruism fundamentally shaped by the social opportunity costs that often accompany helping decisions? Across four studies, we reveal that in cases of realistic tradeoffs in social distance for gains in welfare where helping socially distant others necessitates not helping socially closer others with the same resources, helping is deemed as less morally acceptable. Making helping decisions at …
I remember therefore I am
The role of episodic simulation in motivating commonplace harms
Social value at a distance
From memory to motivation
Research has documented a strong link between constructing episodic simulations -vivid imaginations of specific events-and empathy. To date, most studies have used episodic simulations of helping someone to facilitate affective empathy and promote helping intentions, but have not studied how episodic simulations of another's distressing situation affect empathy. Moreover, affective empathy encompasses both personal distress (i.e., an egocentric e…
Moral Future-Thinking
Humanity’s long-term welfare may lie in the hands of those who are presently living, raising the question of whether people today hold the generations of tomorrow in their moral circles. Five studies (N Total = 1652; Prolific) reveal present-oriented bias in the moral standing of future generations, with greater perceived moral obligation, moral concern, and prosocial intentions for proximal relative to distal future targets. Yet, present-oriente…
The Probabilistic Price of Life Across Time
Is the certainty of saving a life today worth more than the less-certain possibility of saving 10 lives tomorrow? In six pre-registered studies with U.S. samples from Prolific ( N = 5,095), we employed an intergenerational probability discounting task, discovering people discount the value of life as uncertainty and intergenerational distance from the present increase. Specifically, as uncertainty about impacting the future rises, individuals inc…
Psychology (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (4 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (4 works) · Cognition (3 works) · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion (3 works) · Empathy (3 works) · Episodic memory (3 works) · Developmental psychology (2 works)