In our everyday life, we are frequently confronted with situations in which we need to choose between following our egoistic impulses and taking into account the needs of others. Do I spend my money on yet another treat for myself, or do I give it to the beggar sitting on the street corner? Do I buy a powerful SUV car, which is a lot of fun but also quite the polluter, or rather do I invest in an electric vehicle, which is maybe not as much fun, but helps to preserve the environment for future generations? Whether the consequences of our choices for ourselves and others are visible immediately or will only materialize in the future, we need to integrate them into our considerations when deciding.

People differ in the degree to which they consider these aspects in their decision-making. When asked about the principles guiding their decisions, people often refer to their core values. Core values are abstract cognitive-affective-motivational structures that provide meaning and continuity in a constantly changing environment (Brosch & Sander, 2016). They represent beliefs about desirable end states. They shape our perception of the world, guide the selection and evaluation of behaviors and events, and act as a moral compass to which we refer when justifying preferences, decisions, or behaviors (Rohan, 2000). They provide an organizational principle for the self-schema (Roccas & Brewer, 2002), forming the core of our identity (Hitlin, 2003).

Cross-cultural research has shown that the structure of human core values is universal and that people in many different cultures use and recognize the same set of values, while prioritizing them differently in their individual value hierarchy (Schwartz, 1992). One central dimension used to describe differences in individual core value hierarchies spans the continuum from the maximization of self-interest (self-enhancement) to the consideration of the needs and concerns of others (self-transcendence; Schwartz, 1992). A person with pronounced self-transcendence values is more likely to cooperate with others in a laboratory game (Schwartz, 1996) and to devote their free time to volunteering (Shantz, Saksida, & Alfes, 2014) than a person who emphasizes self-enhancement values. Similarly, a person with pronounced self-transcendence values is more likely to consider the long-term consequences of their actions when making decisions, whereas a person who emphasizes self-enhancement values is more likely to focus on the immediate, short-term consequences. For instance, in an experimental study investigating preferences for different fuel types, participants with pronounced self-transcendence values were more willing to invest in expensive fuels causing a relatively low amount of environmental pollution, whereas participants with pronounced self-enhancement values preferred cheap, conveniently accessible fuels causing a high amount of pollution (Khachatryan, Joireman, & Casavant, 2013, see also Bardi & Schwartz, 2003).

The core value concept has emerged as a powerful construct that describes why different people choose differently in the same situation, prioritize different goals, and differentially weigh immediate versus future consequences in their choices.

Neuroscientific research has begun to investigate how core values affect decision processes at the neural level, illuminating how differences in core value hierarchies are associated with activation differences in neural decision systems related to reward processing and social cognition (Brosch & Sander, 2013; Moll, Zahn, & Oliveira-Souza, 2016, for reviews). For example, in a monetary donation task where participants were able to gain money for themselves and also donate some of their money to charity, participants with pronounced self-enhancement values made more egoistic decisions, donating less money to charity. At the neural level, this behavior was accompanied by increased activation of striatal reward regions and the amygdala when they were claiming money for themselves, suggesting that selfish choices are more salient and more rewarding for participants with pronounced self-enhancement values compared with participants with pronounced self-transcendence values (Brosch, Coppin, Scherer, Schwartz, & Sander, 2011).

Conversely, more altruistic behavior was related to increased activation in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), which along with the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and precuneus forms a social cognition network involved in impression formation and thinking about the needs, goals, and beliefs of others (Van Overwalle, 2009). In a similar study, activation in TPJ was correlated with the participants’ willingness to donate money to a charitable organization (Hare, Camerer, Knoepfle, & Rangel, 2010), and neuroanatomical differences in gray matter volume in TPJ have been shown to be strongly associated with altruistic behavior (Morishima, Schunk, Bruhin, Ruff, & Fehr, 2012). These studies indicate that behavior driven by self-transcendence values may be preceded by a more thorough evaluation of the needs and goals of others via an increased activation of neural social cognition regions.

So far, neuroimaging work on core values has mainly focused on actions with immediately visible financial consequences. Because core values also determine to what extent people take into account potential future consequences (Khachatryan et al., 2013), we investigated the relationship of core values and the neural mechanisms underlying the consideration of outcomes that may occur in the future. In the context of the conflict between self-enhancement and self-transcendence core values, it seems especially interesting to contrast events occurring in a “near future,” i.e., occurring during the lifetime of the concerned person, and events occurring in a “far future,” i.e., occurring at a time by which the person will most likely no longer be around to experience these consequences. People with pronounced self-enhancement values may be more concerned about events in the near future compared with the far future, because they mainly care about consequences concerning themselves. Conversely, people with pronounced self-enhancement values may be equally concerned about consequences for themselves and for (future) others.

Previous neuroimaging research has exhaustively mapped the neural regions involved in the mental simulation of future states and episodes. Converging evidence indicates that mental simulations of future states rely on neural systems that also are involved in processes related to episodic memory. Neuroimaging studies have highlighted the activation of a common neural network, including ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), medial temporal lobe, and medial posterior regions when remembering past events and imagining future events (Schacter, Addis, & Buckner, 2007; Schacter et al., 2012, for reviews). When thinking about potential future events, individuals are thought to recombine details from past events into novel scenarios and to project themselves mentally into a simulation of another time, place, or perspective (Buckner & Carroll, 2007).

When comparing the mental simulation of events occurring in the near and far future, respectively, studies have highlighted the importance of the anterior VMPFC for the mental simulation of the far future. For example, thinking about the far future led to stronger activation of the anterior VMPFC (BA 10, 11) compared with thinking of the near future (Okuda et al., 2003). Similarly, when participants were asked to think about potential future events with either positive or negative valence, thinking about the far future led to stronger activation of the ventral part of the anterior VMPFC (BA 11) than thinking of the near future (D'Argembeau, Xue, Lu, Van der Linden, & Bechara, 2008). VMPFC furthermore has been linked to the representation of the personal relevance of simulated future events. For instance, D’Argembeau and colleagues (D'Argembeau et al., 2010) demonstrated increased anterior VMPFC (BA 10, 11) activation when participants were envisioning future events that were related to their personal goals compared with future events not related to their personal goals (see also Stawarczyk & D'Argembeau, 2015). These studies indicate that the anterior VMPFC is involved in simulating and encoding the personal relevance of future events, and especially of far future events.

In the present work, we were interested in investigating the neural mechanisms underlying the impact of core values on the perception of future events that occur either in the near future (and thus will be experienced by participants themselves) and events that occur in the far future (and will thus not be experienced by the participants themselves). Following previous research, which demonstrated the role of core values when considering future outcomes in the environmental domain (Khachatryan et al., 2013), we designed a judgment task in which participants were asked to evaluate future consequences of climate change—one of the most urgent challenges facing our planet. While some negative effects of climate change are already experienced today, future consequences are expected to be much more severe, including extreme weather events, resource shortages, increased social tensions, and extinction of species (IPCC, 2014). To mitigate these developments, behavioral changes, efforts, and investments are required today, but the impact of these actions will mainly benefit future generations (Schelling, 1995). Such an intergenerational conflict is highly likely to discriminate between individuals with pronounced self-enhancement values, who are mainly preoccupied by outcomes that concern themselves, and individuals with pronounced self-transcendence values, who also consider outcomes that concern others.

Given previous demonstrations in the neuroimaging literature that the ventral part of the anterior VMPFC (BA 11) is involved in simulating and encoding the personal relevance of future events, and especially of far future events, we were interested in investigating the link between individual core values and activation in this region of interest. To this end, we measured changes in our participants’ BOLD response while they were reading and evaluating a series of potential consequences of climate change, which were labeled as occurring either in the near or in the far future. Participants were asked to read each consequence and to indicate to what extent they perceive each consequence as a serious problem and to what extent they are worried by it. Approximately 3 months before the scanning session, we measured our participants’ core value hierarchy.

With this design, we addressed the following hypotheses: