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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD

@kyleflaw.com

780 followers 1.5K following 93 posts

Postdoctoral Researcher, ASU | Moral Psychologist Traversing Social-Cognition & Ethical Philosophy | Exploring Exceptional Altruism to Foster a Brighter Collective Future | He/Him kyleflaw.com

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 27

🪦 New in @pnas.org: we analyzed 38 million U.S. obituaries to ask what signals a life well lived:

What values are people most remembered for?

How do legacies shift with cultural events?

How do age and gender shape what it means to have lived well?

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

An exploration of basic human values in 38 million obituaries over 30 years | PNAS

How societies remember the dead can reveal what people value in life. We analyzed 38 million obituaries from the United States to examine how perso...

www.pnas.org

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · 5d

With @jowylie.bsky.social, Gordon Kraft-Todd, @nathanliang.bsky.social, @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social, and @stysyropoulos.bsky.social!

Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · 5d

Practically, if people expect their own virtue to be judged more favorably, this could (potentially) make them more willing to act publicly, which may support norm setting. Still, the consistent discounting of public relative to private virtue suggests those acts may carry a credibility cost.

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · 5d

Yet these asymmetries vanish when judgments are made side by side. Moreover, across studies, public virtue was judged as less morally good than private virtue (i.e., virtue discounting), a difference most consistently accounted for by lower attributions of principled motivation for public actions.

Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · 5d

Across 4 preregistered studies (N=2,511), we find self-serving asymmetries. On average, people expect their own public acts of virtue to appear more principled, less reputation driven, and more trustworthy than people tend to rate identical public actions performed by others.

Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · 5d

Public displays of virtue like donating or speaking up can set norms, but they’re often met with skepticism (“virtue discounting”). Our new paper asks: do people expect their own public virtue to be judged differently than others’ similar actions?
bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

<em>British Journal of Social Psychology</em> | Wiley Online Library

Public acts of virtue can promote prosocial norms yet are often met with moral scepticism – a phenomenon known as virtue discounting. What psychological processes might underlie people's propensity t....

bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 27

Exactly! Obituaries are usually written positively rather than neutrally. But that’s the point. They reveal what a society values as living well, and how those values differ depending on who is being remembered, and how they shift across time and in response to collectively shared events.

Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 27

The (stellar) team behind this work: David Markowitz, Thomas Mazzuchi, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, me, and @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social

Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 27

Taken together, obituaries show how societies remember the dead by encoding values, responding to cultural upheavals, and reinforcing scripts of age and gender. They are cultural time capsules that reveal what we believe makes a life well lived.

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 27

Reflecting cultural scripts:

Men’s legacies were more dynamic across the lifespan, often tied to achievement & power.

Women’s were steadier, more often tied to benevolence & hedonism.

Older people were remembered more for tradition & conformity than younger people.

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 27

Legacies shifted with major events:
• Security declined after 9/11
• Achievement fell after the 2008 crash
• Benevolence collapsed during COVID and has not recovered four years later

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 27

The most common values across obituaries were tradition and benevolence.

Values like power and stimulation appeared less often.

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 27

An exploration of basic human values in 38 million obituaries over 30 years | PNAS

How societies remember the dead can reveal what people value in life. We analyzed 38 million obituaries from the United States to examine how perso...

www.pnas.org

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 17

Across 6 European countries, people feel more responsible to protect future generations than to directly reduce climate change. Both forms of responsibility predict climate policy support.

🔗 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lcgHzzKDP...

New paper w/ Zhaoquan Wang, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, & many others.

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 5

The team: @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, Bren O’Connor, @amormino.bsky.social, @drcharlie.bsky.social, Brock Bastian, Abigail Marsh & @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social

Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 5

@seoyeonbae211.bsky.social and I spoke with @drjimdavies.bsky.social about our new preprint on altruistic motivation.

Grateful for his thoughtful write-up in @nautil.us and the outstanding team behind this work (see below)!

drjimdavies.bsky.social @drjimdavies.bsky.social · Jul 31

In @nautil.us @drjimdavies.bsky.social reports on a huge study: People are motivated more by helping others than self-oriented motivations like reputation. Implications for how we try to encourage goodness .https://nautil.us/people-really-want-to-be-good-1227879/ @carleton-cogsci.bsky.social

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Jun 3

@lianeleeyoung.bsky.social @stysyropoulos.bsky.social @amormino.bsky.social @drcharlie.bsky.social @realmoralitylab.bsky.social

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Jun 3

Excited to share
@seoyeonbae211.bsky.social's first preprint—an ambitious global study of human motivation!

Using data from 900,000+ people in 100+ countries, we find altruistic motives consistently outweigh egoistic ones across cultures.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Jun 3

We asked over 8,700 people in 6 countries to think about future generations in decision-making, and this is what we found theconversation.com/we-asked-ove... @stysyropoulos.bsky.social

We asked over 8,700 people in 6 countries to think about future generations in decision-making, and this is what we found

When people reflect on how their actions shape the future, they are more likely to support solutions to present-day issues like poverty and inequality.

theconversation.com

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · May 29

Across 3 studies, we find that valuing future lives equally—regardless of their distance in time—predicts stronger interest in long-term oriented, high-impact careers.

Preprint here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

@stysyropoulos.bsky.social @amormino.bsky.social @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social

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Reposted by Kyle Fiore Law, PhD

Bastian Jaeger @bxjaeger.bsky.social · May 14

Asking participants to roleplay as a leader of a committee protecting future generations & having them partake in a philosophical thought exercise emphasizing reduction of intergenerational harm increased moral concern felt towards future generations. @kyleflaw.com

doi.org/10.1111/bjso...

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Reposted by Kyle Fiore Law, PhD

Brian D. Earp, PhD @briandavidearp.bsky.social · Apr 26

PsyArXiv Preprints | Mapping the Moral Architecture of Effective and Extraordinary Altruism

Mapping the Moral Architecture of Effective and Extraordinary Altruism

While global challenges demand both impartiality and effectiveness, people often prioritize those nearby and overlook the impact of their prosocial actions. Here, we examined what moral values…

osf.io

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Apr 24

Hey y’all! New paper with @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social & @stysyropoulos.bsky.social is out in BJSP!

We test ways to expand moral concern to future generations, with spillover benefits for distant others today.

#socialpsych #PsychSciSky #psychology

bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

<em>British Journal of Social Psychology</em> | Wiley Online Library

In three studies (N = 8775) including two pre-registered experiments and a pre-registered cross-national replication across five countries, we tested whether intergenerational appeals that emphasize ...

bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Kyle Fiore Law, PhD

Stylianos Syropoulos @stysyropoulos.bsky.social · Apr 22

🚨 New preprint! What drives truly selfless giving?

Led by @kyleflaw.bsky.social! We studied effective altruists (EAs) and organ donors to strangers (ODs) comparing them to controls.

EAs & ODs ⬆️ moral expansiveness
EAs ⬆️utilitarianism

Notably, loyalty isn’t always parochial. 👀
🔗 in comments!

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Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Apr 19

Thanks, Daryl. This helps.

Reposted by Kyle Fiore Law, PhD

Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · Apr 12

I've added a list at the bottom of the post linking to some places you could donate to help programs affected by the foreign aid cuts.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/i/161097332/...

Where you can donate
Here is a brief list of some of the places you could donate.

GiveWell – A nonprofit that identifies and recommends some of the most cost-effective, evidence-based charities in global health. In response to the aid cuts, they’ve prioritized filling urgent funding gaps in malaria prevention, HIV testing, and healthcare worker training.

Project Resource Optimization – A team of researchers and cost-effectiveness analysts who built a live list of high-impact USAID-funded programs affected by the aid freeze. They’re talking regularly with implementing partners to identify the most urgent and cost-effective projects at risk of shutting down. On their ‘funding opportunities’ page, you can find programs directly affected and donate to them directly, or contact the research team for more information.

Foreign Aid Bridge Fund – An emergency philanthropic fund created to support lifesaving programs suddenly defunded by the foreign aid freeze. It focuses on bridging short-term gaps to prevent program collapse, such as HIV clinics in Kenya and Zimbabwe, health programs in Ethiopia, and disaster-resilient housing in Nepal.

Rapid Response Fund – Another emergency philanthropic fund launched by Founders Pledge and The Life You Can Save to quickly support top-rated global health and poverty programs facing sudden shortfalls. It provides emergency funding to keep high-impact interventions running during the aid cuts.

Gavi – A public-private global health partnership that provides vaccines to millions of children in low-income countries. The US, their largest donor (12%), withdrew all their funding for Gavi, putting global vaccination campaigns at risk.

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