Abstract
This paper experimentally examines the effect of speech rate on intertemporal decisions. In a delay-discounting task, subjects made a series of intertemporal choices between smaller-sooner and larger-delayed rewards and were asked to listen to a voice recording verbalizing the information for payoff options. We manipulated the speech rate of the voice recordings and administered two treatment conditions: Slow and Fast. We did not find an overall treatment effect in the acoustic manipulation.
Highlights
Many economic transactions are facilitated through certain forms of verbal communication
Our results show that the subtle speech rate manipulation somewhat influences female subjects’ intertemporal decisions but has nearly zero impact on male subjects’ decisions, albeit the difference is not statistically significant
Speech rate and other nonverbal cues play an important role in shaping individual judgements and decision-making
Summary
Many economic transactions are facilitated through certain forms of verbal communication. Standard economic models focus primarily on payoff-related information, nonverbal cues meaningfully shape individual perception and judgment. Speech rate, the pace at which people speak, is a salient nonverbal element in communication. Existing psychological studies have shown that speech rate influences listeners’ perception and judgment of a speaker’s personality attributes [1–5]. Little is known about how speech rate affects listeners’ subsequent decision-making, especially in economically important contexts. The present study aims to examine the speed rate effect on people’s intertemporal decisions in a controlled experiment
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