Abstract
Social discounting has been attracting attention in behavioral psychology, econophysics, and neuroeconomics. Several mathematical models have been proposed for social discounting; exponential discounting, hyperbolic discounting, a q-exponential discounting model based on Tsallis’ statistics. In order to experimentally examine the mathematical characteristics of the q-exponential social discounting models for gain and loss in humans, we estimated the parameters of the q-exponential social discounting models by assessing the points of subjective equality (indifference points) at seven social distances. We observed that gain was more steeply social-discounted than loss. Usefulness of the q-exponential social discounting model in social physics, econophysics, and cultural neuroeconomics are discussed.
Highlights
Applications of mathematical functions originally developed in mathematical and statistical physics to social sciences such as behavioral economics and neuroeconomics have been attracting attention [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]
In order to generalize and unify these social discounting models, [11] proposed the q-exponential social discounting model based on deformed algebra developed in Tsallis’ statistics
This study is the first to experimentally examine social discounting behavior for gain and loss, by utilizing the q-exponential discounting model based on deformed algebra developed in Tsallis’ thermostatistics
Summary
Applications of mathematical functions originally developed in mathematical and statistical physics to social sciences such as behavioral economics and neuroeconomics have been attracting attention [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13] These applications have started to elucidate anomalous human behaviors such as irrationality in individual decision making (e.g., hyperbolic temporal discounting [14] and altruism [11]). The present study experimentally determined parameters in the q-exponential social discounting model (as well as exponential and hyperbolic social discounting models) for gain and loss in Japanese subjects
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