ReviewNature human behaviour2025
When development constricts our moral circle.
Review in Nature human behaviour, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Choosing Not to Eat Meat: What Characterizes Independently Vegetarian Children?Developmental science · 2026Article
- Stable intuition and the rise of deliberative prosociality in childhood.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Deconstructing the moral circle: Obligations as the driver of moral expansion.The British journal of social psychology · 2026Article
- Compassionate mind training as school-based social and emotional learning: extension to younger pupils and effects of programme dosage.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many people believe that our 'moral circle' expands as we grow up. We first care for family members and friends, then gradually extend this care to distant others. Some scholars argue that this presumed broadening of moral concern is driven by our increasing capacity to recognize, through reason, that the suffering of strangers matters as much as the suffering of those we love. Yet, recent research complicates this story. In several domains, younger children start out with a more expansive moral circle than older children and adults. Younger children are more likely than their older counterparts to judge relationally, physically and phylogenetically distant others as worthy of help or protection. These findings suggest, counterintuitively, that development may not widen our moral circle but may sometimes narrow it. This Perspective raises the possibility that, rather than focusing on overcoming biases against caring for distant others, we should also recognize that, in some domains, we possess an early-emerging tendency to care for them.
Indexed as
Identifiers
40437156What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.