IMPACT OF SITUATIONAL AND PROPOSITIONAL TIME FLOW ON MONETARY SAVING PROPOSITION MADE IN THE FIRST- AND THE THIRD-PERSON PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

IntroductionPersonal perspective on an event and its extension in time are two key factors in social interactions. Both impact the evaluation of an event and the intensity of different interpersonal exchanges - the goods exchange, money transaction or harmonization of political plans. Fruitful social transactions would be impossible if human mind could not produce both: first- and third-person perspectives on one and the same object or relation. Distinguishing between personal perspective and perspective taken by of others is fundamental for social communication (Decety & Sommerville, 2003). One's own goals and attitudes are expressed from the first person perspective (1PP), while the goals and attitudes of others are presented as the third-person perspective (3PP). So, for a moment an individual human mind should be able to identify itself with others. This ability helps to plan one's own behavior and contributes to a more optimal communicative action. A number of the social interactions extend over time, e.g., money depositing, securing future income or planning of future family life. Economic transactions like investing in the stock market and planning a corporate investment are also realized in time dimension and depend on cognitive representation of time flow. As shown in the studies by Loewenstein (1988) there are different ways to frame a decision in time dimension, thus, the properties of time dimension of human experience may have an impact on such actions. Therefore, we examined the variation of subjective acceptability of one and the same monetary saving proposition depending on a) the personal perspective (1PP vs. 3PP) and b) on the representation of proposition in time. So, an impact of the firstand the third-person perspectives on monetary proposition and its variation over time are of interest in this study.Cognitive Representations of Time Flow: Situational and Propositional TimeIn cognitive sciences time flow is conventionally conceptualized as linear, homogeneous and equal for all objects. But one can raise the question: is a subject served well just by one cognitive representation of time flow? Must the time flow be represented in the mind exclusively as a singular temporal process? The indications of the mind's ability to develop few cognitive representations of time flow can be found in an implicit form in the studies by Chen (2013) and Read et al. (2005). Chen (2013) has shown that languages differ widely in the ways they encode time. He has proved the hypothesis that those languages that grammatically associate the future and the present, foster futureoriented behavior. According to Chen (2013), the speakers of such languages: 'save more, retire with more wealth, smoke less, practice safer sex, and are less obese'. This finding holds both across countries and within countries when comparing demographically similar native households. Read et al. (2005) have shown that one and the same future proposition but once marked by the calendar date and the other time as time delay induce different preferences. In conclusion they state: the description of a temporal interval affects discounting of proposition. But describing this paradox they avoid an explicit assumption about the minds ability to produce more than one representation of time flow.Based on Freyd's (1987) assumption about the temporal dimension of a mental representation, a temporal variable was introduced into a topical account paradigm (Polunin, 2009). By varying it, a number of temporal processes were distinguished: past openness, aging in the past and future time mode, and zero probability barrier in the future time mode (Polunin, 2009, 2011). Each of them has specific properties and, therefore, is as a separate temporal process to consider. A temporal process is defined as a change of an object-representation over time in one qualitative domain, e.g., its subjective attractiveness. Such change reflects a specific development of object over time but without change of its identity. …