Future altruism: Social discounting of delayed rewards

Authors

Richard Yi, University of Arkansas for Medical SciencesFollow
Shawn Charlton, University of Central ArkansasFollow
Caitlin Porter, University of Central Arkansas
Anne E. Carter, University of Arkansas for Medical SciencesFollow
Warren K. Bickel, University of Arkansas for Medical SciencesFollow

Abstract

Social discounting assesses an individual's willingness to forgo an outcome for the self in lieu of a larger outcome for someone else. The purpose of the present research was to examine the effect of adding a common delay to outcomes in a binary choice, social discounting procedure. Based on the premise that both social and temporal distances are dimensions of psychological distance, we hypothesized that social discounting should decrease as a function of delay to the outcomes. Across two within-subject experiments, participants indicated preference between a hypothetical money reward for the self or for someone else. The outcomes were associated with no, short, and long delays. Both studies confirmed our hypothesis that adding any delay to the receipt of outcomes decreases social discounting, though no significant differences were observed between short and long delays. These results are discussed in the context of some existing literature on altruism. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

Publication Title

Behavioural Processes

Recommended Citation

Yi, R., Charlton, S., Porter, C., Carter, A., & Bickel, W. (2011). Future altruism: Social discounting of delayed rewards. Behavioural Processes, 86 (1), 160-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2010.09.003