Although it has been suggested that future-oriented people tend to think more abstractly than
present-oriented people in that they have a stronger focus on abstract issues and superordinate
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goals when making decisions (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999), the current studies did not directly
examine whether abstraction mediates the relationship between individual differences in time
orientation and moral concerns. Indeed, there is now research suggesting that abstraction
partially explains why people who are concerned with future consequences of behaviour are less
tolerant of moral transgressions compared with people who are more concerned with immediate
consequences of actions (Agerström & Björklund, in press).