Extreme self-sacrifice beyond fusion: Moral expansiveness and the special case of allyship

Abstract

As a general theory of extreme self-sacrifice, Whitehouse's article misses one relevant dimension: people's willingness to fight and die in support of entities not bound by biological markers or ancestral kinship (allyship). We discuss research on moral expansiveness, which highlights individuals' capacity to self-sacrifice for targets that lie outside traditional in-group markers, including racial out-groups, animals, and the natural environment.