Social Discounting Task Research Articles

Cannabis as a shareable commodity in a social discounting task.

Cannabis use and cannabis use disorder diagnoses continue to increase in United States college-aged students as more states legalize recreational cannabis. Previous studies have attempted to associate cannabis use with delay discount rates, which involves participants making choices for smaller sooner versus larger later hypothetical rewards. More smaller sooner choices result in higher discount rates and suggest increased impulsivity. Delay discounting studies have shown a significant, but small effect size with people who use cannabis more likely to choose the smaller sooner rewards, relative to people who do not use cannabis. The present study tested whether students with different experience using cannabis (people who currently use cannabis, people who formerly used cannabis, or people who never used cannabis) would be sensitive to sharing a proportion of hypothetical marijuana with another individual at a given social distance, as a putative measure for cannabis value. Results from two separate data sets showed that students classified as current cannabis users were significantly less likely to share a proportion of hypothetical marijuana across a range of social distances, relative to students that self-reported never using cannabis. Students classified as either former or current users were not statistically different. These results were consistent with previous delay discounting results and showed a medium effect size (η² ≥ 0.10) for each data set, both separately and when combined. These results indicate that social distance is a meaningful variable that can be used in a modified discounting task to assess differential cannabis value in a student population who are increasingly susceptible to cannabis use disorder. These results may have future clinical implications. Social discount rates for cannabis may be able to differentiate individuals who will continue recreational use versus individuals that may develop cannabis dependence problems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Little evidence that androstadienone affects social distance-dependent prosocial behaviour: a pre-registered study.

In navigating the complexities of social life, humans have evolved to interpret invisible odorous chemical cues, with profound behavioural impacts often unbeknown to the conscious mind. The manifestation of this in humans is evident in the scent of androstadienone (androsta-4,16-dien-3-one), an odorous compound which is considered a putative human pheromone. The current study investigated the effect of androstadienone on social distance-dependent prosocial behaviour measured by a social discounting task, in which participants chose between selfish and generous options. Based on our pre-registration, we predicted a sex-specific effect, with males exposed to androstadienone exhibiting increased generosity, while females would choose more selfishly. Employing a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subject design, we recruited 170 participants who were randomly assigned to either the androstadienone or control condition. Olfactory stimuli were administered while participants completed the social discounting task. Inconsistent with our hypothesis, inhaling androstadienone did not impact social distance-dependent prosocial behaviour. This finding was supported by multiple estimates of prosociality, including model-free, model-based and maximum likelihood estimation. Further analyses indicated that androstadienone administration did not influence perceived social distance or bias participants towards being generous or selfish. Thus, our empirical findings provide no support for the hypothesis that androstadienone modulates generosity.

A multi-method investigation of motive dispositions: affiliative and antagonistic dispositions in psychopathy

Purpose To replicate and extend research on psychopathy and intrinsic interpersonal preferences under the broader umbrella of affiliation, intimacy and antagonism, this paper aims to examine motivational correlates of psychopathy in a nonclinical sample (N = 125). Design/methodology/approach We used a multimethod design, including self-reports, a behavioral task and a physiological assessment of motive dispositions (automatic affective reactions to stimuli of interpersonal transactions measured with facial electromyography). Findings Results showed that self-reported psychopathy was negatively associated with self-reported intimacy motive. In the same vein, via the social discounting task, this paper found a negative association between psychopathy and a tendency to share hypothetical monetary amounts with very close others. Finally, regarding fEMG findings, multilevel analyses revealed that although individuals with low levels of psychopathy reacted more positively to affiliative stimuli, individuals with high levels of psychopathy reacted equally positively to both affiliative and antagonistic stimuli, and these results were robust across psychopathy measures. Results remained mostly unchanged on the subscale level. Originality/value These findings highlight the contribution of multimethod assessments in capturing nuances of motivation. Implicit physiological measures might be particularly sensitive in capturing motive dispositions in relation to psychopathy. Identifying mechanisms that foster positive connections between psychopathic traits and nonprosocial tendencies may be theoretically and clinically informative, with implications for forensic and penal practices.

To produce or not to produce? Contrasting the effect of substance abuse in social decision-making situations

Substance use disorders (SUD) have been related to high criminal justice costs, expensive healthcare, social impairment, and decision-making deficits. In non-social decision-making tasks, people with SUD tend to take more risks and choose small immediate rewards than controls. However, few studies have explored how people with SUD behave in social decision-making situations where the resources and profits depend directly on participants' real-time interaction, i.e., social foraging situations. To fulfill this gap, we developed a real-time interaction task to (a) compare the proportion of producers (individuals who tend to search for food sources) and scroungers (individuals who tend to steal or join previously discovered food sources) among participants with SUD and controls with respect to the optimal behavior predicted by the Rate Maximization Model, and (b) explore the relationship between social foraging strategies, prosocial behavior, and impulsivity. Here participants with SUD (n = 20) and a non-user control group (n = 20) were exposed to the Guaymas Foraging task (GFT), the Social Discounting task (SD), and the Delay Discounting task (DD). We found that participants in the control group tended to produce more and obtain higher profits in contrast to substance abuser groups. Additionally, SD and DD rates were higher for scroungers than producers regardless of the group. Our results suggest that producers tend to be more altruistic and less impulsive than scroungers. Knowing more about social strategies and producers' characteristics could help develop substance abuse prevention programs.

Neural responses underlying extraordinary altruists' generosity for socially distant others.

Most people are much less generous toward strangers than close others, a bias termed social discounting. But people who engage in extraordinary real-world altruism, like altruistic kidney donors, show dramatically reduced social discounting. Why they do so is unclear. Some prior research suggests reduced social discounting requires effortfully overcoming selfishness via recruitment of the temporoparietal junction. Alternatively, reduced social discounting may reflect genuinely valuing strangers' welfare more due to how the subjective value of their outcomes is encoded in regions such as rostral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and amygdala. We tested both hypotheses in this pre-registered study. We also tested the hypothesis that a loving-kindness meditation (LKM) training intervention would cause typical adults' neural and behavioral patterns to resemble altruists. Altruists and matched controls (N = 77) completed a social discounting task during functional magnetic resonance imaging; 25 controls were randomized to complete LKM training. Neither behavioral nor imaging analyses supported the hypothesis that altruists' reduced social discounting reflects effortfully overcoming selfishness. Instead, group differences emerged in social value encoding regions, including rostral ACC and amygdala. Activation in these regions corresponded to the subjective valuation of others' welfare predicted by the social discounting model. LKM training did not result in more generous behavioral or neural patterns, but only greater perceived difficulty during social discounting. Our results indicate extraordinary altruists' generosity results from the way regions involved in social decision-making encode the subjective value of others' welfare. Interventions aimed at promoting generosity may thus succeed to the degree they can increase the subjective valuation of others' welfare.

The interaction game: A reciprocity‐based minimal paradigm for the induction of social distance

AbstractThe investigation of how social distance affects psychological phenomena has relied mostly on comparisons between strangers and acquaintances. Such an operationalization suffers from a confound between social distance and acquaintance. We propose an experimental paradigm that manipulates social distance while avoiding the aforementioned confound. By relying on reciprocity and known social tie formation mechanisms, the Interaction Game provides researchers with a powerful tool for the investigation of social distance effects without inducing negative affective or emotional states. Four preregistered experiments demonstrate the internal and external validity of the paradigm. The capability of manipulating social distance in a targeted manner constitutes a critical step towards advancing our knowledge of the impact of such metrics on human cognition and behavior. Moreover, Experiment 4 demonstrates that the Interaction Game can induce social distance that is free of acquaintanceship, and that such a minimal manipulation is sufficient for inducing close‐other favoritism in a social discounting task. These findings expand our understanding of social distance as a powerful mechanism underlying social judgments and behaviors.

Using a social discounting task to measure differential personal information sharing.

A recent social discounting study showed that individuals share personal information in a similar way to money, suggesting that personal information has quantifiable properties for individuals. This is important because many online scams, such as phishing, target sharing different forms of personal information. However, no previous study has tested whether different forms of personal information are shared more or less than others. The current study used a modified social discounting task to test whether there were differences in the amount of personal information shared across four different forms: identification, financial, health, and security information. A between-participant experiment enrolling 100 college-aged participants showed that individuals had a significantly higher discounting rate for health information compared to three other forms of personal information, suggesting that health information was shared more for the participants. There were no statistically significant discounting rate differences between the other three forms of personal information. The results demonstrate that the social discounting task is a viable way to assess differential sharing for personal information. Future research should examine why health information is shared less than other forms of personal information, and whether this increases risk for falling prey to phishing scams targeting different forms of personal information.

Variations in progesterone and estradiol across the menstrual cycle predict generosity toward socially close others

The human tendency to share goods with others at personal costs declines across the perceived social distance to them, an observation termed social discounting. Cumulating evidence suggests that social preferences are influenced by the agent’s neurohormonal state. Here we tested whether endogenous fluctuations in steroid hormone compositions across the menstrual cycle were associated with differences in generosity in a social discounting task. Adult healthy, normally-cycling, women made incentivized decisions between high selfish rewards for themselves and lower generous rewards for themselves but also for other individuals at variable social distances from their social environment. We determined participants’ current levels of menstrual-cycle-dependent steroid hormones via salivary sampling. Results revealed that the increase in progesterone levels as well as the decrease in estradiol levels, but not changes in testosterone or cortisol, across the menstrual cycle, accounted for increased generosity specifically toward socially close others, but not toward remote strangers.

They Are Not Little Emperors: Only Children Are Just as Altruistic as Non-Only Children

Negative stereotypes about only children (OC) have caused widespread concern. However, relatively little is known about the accuracy of these stereotypes, especially regarding altruistic behaviors. In Study 1 (N = 337), participants rated the altruism of OC and non-only children (NOC) on three measurements on the basis of the participants’ perceptions. Results revealed that participants rated OC as less altruistic, and the stereotype primarily came from NOC raters. Results of Study 2 (N = 391) did not reveal any difference between OC and NOC in altruism. In Study 3 (N = 99), a social discounting task was applied to further investigate whether OC and NOC displayed different degrees of altruistic behavior toward various social distances. No differences were found among individuals at close or distant social distances. Ultimately, this research indicates that the negative stereotype regarding the altruistic behavior of OC is an incorrect prejudice.

Horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism and preferences for altruism: A social discounting study

Preferences for altruism are important in prosocial human behaviour. Studies have documented some differences in social discounting between cultures based on group-level comparisons. It is not clear however how cultural values such as individualism and collectivism are associated with social discounting at the individual-level. The research reported in this paper is based on an incentivized social discounting experiment conducted with 133 laboratory subjects in South Africa, using the standard social discounting task (SDT) and the 14-item reduced-form IND-COL scale. The analysis explores the associations between preferences for altruism and the Individualism and Collectivism (IC) dichotomy and, more specifically, with the Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism (HVIC) schema. The study finds only horizontal collectivism to be associated with greater preferences for altruism. Global shifts toward greater individualism therefore need not threaten the realisation of the benefits of altruism.

Testosterone reduces generosity through cortical and subcortical mechanisms

Recent evidence has linked testosterone, a major sex hormone, to selfishness in economic decision-making. Here, we aimed to investigate the neural mechanisms through which testosterone reduces generosity by combining functional MRI with pharmacological manipulation among healthy young males in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subject design. After testosterone or placebo gel administration, participants performed a social discounting task in which they chose between selfish options (benefiting only the participant) and generous options (providing also some benefit to another person at a particular social distance). At the behavioral level, testosterone reduced generosity compared to the placebo. At the neural level (n = 60), the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) encoded the other-regarding value of the generous option during generous choices, and this effect was attenuated by testosterone, suggesting that testosterone reduced the consideration of other's welfare as underpinned by TPJ activity. Moreover, TPJ activity more strongly reflected individual differences in generosity in the placebo than the testosterone group. Furthermore, testosterone weakened the relation between the other-regarding value of generous decisions and connectivity between the TPJ and a region extending from the insula into the striatum. Together, these findings suggest that a network encompassing both cortical and subcortical components underpins the effects of testosterone on social preferences.

Decision-making process underlying bystanders’ helping cyberbullying victims: A behavioral economic analysis of role of social discounting

The goal of the present study was to examine a decision-making process underlying bystanders' helping cyberbullying victims from a behavioral economic perspective. In a novel social-discounting task that involved a hypothetical scenario in which participants encountered cyberbullying instances as a bystander, they rated their likelihood of helping cyberbullying victims versus taking no action. Several cyberbullying situations were presented in the vignettes of the task, in which the social distance to the victims ranged from the person who is emotionally closest to the participants to a mere acquaintance and participants were asked to imagine each situation. The vignettes also presented three levels of intensity of cyberbullying (mild, moderate, and severe). The results showed that the likelihood of helping victims (a) decreased as a hyperbolic function of the social distance to the victims, (b) was greater for participants who had a past experience of helping victims, (c) varied systematically as a function of the intensity of cyberbullying, (d) was significantly correlated with empathy toward victims, and (e) significantly predicted intention to help victims. These findings support the importance of the social-discounting process in bystanders’ decision to help victims as well as indicate the novel task possess some validity. Implications for developing effective interventions strategies and the utility of the present task as a research tool are discussed.

Willingness to share, impulsivity and the Dark Triad traits

The purpose of the study was to test hypotheses regarding a form of social discounting in which the subjective value of a reward decreases as a function of the number of people it is shared with. Along with the Short Dark Triad measure, participants (N = 284) completed a social discounting task in which they were asked to make choices between a hypothetical amount of money to keep for themselves and a hypothetical amount of money to share with a specified number of people. They also competed a delay discounting task, in which they were asked to make choices between immediate small outcomes and delayed bigger outcomes. To probe the unique contribution of three Dark Triad traits predicting both discounting types, we conducted separated multiple linear regression analyses. The study revealed that the higher one’s psychopathy and Machiavellianism, the greater one’s social discounting, indicating more selfishness and lack of willingness to share with other people. On the other hand, the higher one’s narcissism, the smaller one’s social discounting, indicating more willingness to share. These findings place in doubt the selfishness of narcissism. Second, in case of delay discounting, only psychopathy and narcissism predicted steep delay discounting, suggesting that individuals who score high in psychopathy and narcissism tend to obtain rather immediate outcomes. Also, Machiavellianism was not significantly associated with delay discounting. Finally, a positive correlation was observed between delay and social discounting. The results indicated that social discounting was related to, but not equivalent to, delay discounting.

Egocentric biases and atypical generosity in autistic individuals.

Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) often experience difficulty and confusion in acknowledging others' perspectives and arguably exhibit egocentricity. However, whether this egocentricity necessarily results in selfish behavior during social situations remains a matter of debate. To study this relationship, we used computerized visuospatial perspective-taking task (VPT) and social-discounting task (SDT), derived from cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, and examined egocentric and other-oriented judgments in participants with ASCs (mean age 29.0 ± 4.2 years) and a group of matched typically developing (TD) controls (30.8 ± 8.5). The response time in VPT showed altered perspective-taking in the ASCs group compared with the TD group that involved in enhanced self-other intrusion and condition-insensitive response. Regardless of self/other perspective judgments, responses were relatively slower and consistent in duration in the ASCs group compared with the TD group. Social discounting was attenuated rather than steep discounting in the ASCs group. Their discounting was comparatively more consistent, irrespective of the task condition (i.e., self-other closeness-level). In effect, ASCs group exhibited more generous decisions than the TD group in this task. Finally, those with more egocentric perspective intrusion in VPT paradoxically showed more generous behaviors in SDT in the ASCs group. Our findings suggest that having ASCs does not always exhibit selfish behavior during interpersonal communication. Reduced flexibility in distinguishing self/other perspective and shifting decision-rules might account for this unique relationship between egocentricity and apparently generous behaviors. These results extend the recent suggestion that more careful attention should be paid to the idea of egocentricity in individuals with ASCs. Autism Res 2019. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: We aimed to examine whether seeing the world from another person's point of view and being generous toward other people are related in autistic and nonautistic people. We used a visual perspective-taking task and a social task in which individuals made decisions about how to divide a sum of money with others. Our results suggest that being autistic does not always make someone bad at seeing the world from another's viewpoint, and that autistic people may make fairer social decisions toward unfamiliar people because of lower bias.

Incentivising the Social Discounting Task: A Laboratory Experiment

AbstractIncentivising the social discounting task impacts the measurement of altruism in a student population. Incentivised subjects are more altruistic at close social distances, especially subjects who are less altruistic, thus providing evidence of reciprocal altruism. There is also some evidence of hypothetical bias among more altruistically inclined subjects. Making payments real also influences the subject's choice of recipient. Paid subjects select more geographically distant, but psychologically closer subjects, because of prospects for increased anonymity and enforced reciprocity, respectively. Further research is required to verify the robustness of these results, in the laboratory and especially in the field.

Putting a premium on altruism: A social discounting experiment with South African university students.

This paper reports on a social discounting experiment conducted with university students in South Africa. In line with other social discounting task experiments, participants identify target individuals at different degrees of intimacy in their social network and then make 10 choices involving sums of money for themselves or their targets. For an altruism premium to exist, senders’ donations to recipients should be positive, statistically and economically significant, and independent of relationship closeness. We hypothesize that in addition to the altruism premium for kin documented in the literature, there may be other premia for family in general and for partners and friends. We find that, apart from the “kinship” premium, there is a sizeable “intimacy” premium, which together translates into a substantial “family” premium. The study also finds a “friendship premium”, as is documented in various experiments. The closeness of relationships among family and kin, especially close kin, has a significant and large effect on altruism. The results also attest to the importance of the extended family in regards to the “kinship” premium on altruism. These various premiums on altruism emphasise the importance of the supportive role of various social systems. Nevertheless, altruism within families and among close kin might also be enhanced by building more cohesive and stronger families using developmental social welfare programmes.

Neural congruence between intertemporal and interpersonal self-control: Evidence from delay and social discounting

Behavioral studies using delay and social discounting as indices of self-control and altruism, respectively, have revealed functional similarities between farsighted and social decisions. However, neural evidence for this functional link is lacking. Twenty-five young adults completed a delay and social discounting task during fMRI scanning. A spatiotemporal partial least squares analysis revealed that both forms of discounting were well characterized by a pattern of brain activity in areas comprising frontoparietal control, default, and mesolimbic reward networks. Both forms of discounting appear to draw on common neurocognitive mechanisms, regardless of whether choices involve intertemporal or interpersonal outcomes. We also observed neural profiles differentiating between high and low discounters. High discounters were well characterized by increased medial temporal lobe and limbic activity. In contrast, low discount rates were associated with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and right temporoparietal junction. This pattern may reflect biological mechanisms underlying behavioral heterogeneity in discount rates.

Gender-Specific Effects of Cognitive Load on Social Discounting.

We live busy, social lives, and meeting the challenges of our complex environments puts strain on our cognitive systems. However, cognitive resources are limited. It is unclear how cognitive load affects social decision making. Previous findings on the effects of cognitive load on other-regarding preferences have been ambiguous, allowing no coherent opinion whether cognitive load increases, decreases or does not affect prosocial considerations. Here, we suggest that social distance between individuals modulates whether generosity towards a recipient increases or decreases under cognitive load conditions. Participants played a financial social discounting task with several recipients at variable social distance levels. In this task, they could choose between generous alternatives, yielding medium financial rewards for the participant and recipient at variable social distances, or between a selfish alternative, yielding larger rewards for the participant alone. We show that the social discount function of male participants was significantly flattened under high cognitive load conditions, suggesting they distinguished less between socially close and socially distant recipients. Unexpectedly, the cognitive-load effect on social discounting was gender-specific: while social discounting was strongly dependent on cognitive load in men, women were nearly unaffected by cognitive load manipulations. We suggest that cognitive load leads men, but not women to simplify the decision problem by neglecting the social distance information. We consider our study a good starting point for further experiments exploring the role of gender in prosocial choice.

Impact of episodic thinking on altruism

Episodic future thinking, which refers to the use of prospective imagery to concretely imagine oneself in future scenarios, has been shown to reduce delay discounting (enhance self-control). A parallel approach, in which prospective imagery is used to concretely imagine other's scenarios, may similarly reduce social discounting (i.e., enhance altruism). In study 1, participants engaged in episodic thinking about the self or others, in a repeated-measures design, while completing a social discounting task. Reductions in social discounting were observed as a function of episodic thinking about others, though an interaction with order was also observed. Using an independent-measures design in study 2, the effect of episodic thinking about others was replicated. Study 3 addressed a limitation of studies 1 and 2, the possibility that simply thinking about others decreased social discounting. Capitalizing on Construal Level Theory, which specifies that social distance and time in the future are both dimensions of a common psychological distance, we hypothesized that episodic future thinking should also decrease social discounting. Participants engaged in episodic future thinking or episodic present thinking, in a repeated-measures design, while completing a social discounting task. The pattern of results was similar to study 1, providing support for the notion that episodic thinking about psychologically distant outcomes (for others or in the future) reduces social discounting. Application of similar episodic thinking approaches may enhance altruism.

Altruism and anonymity: A behavioral analysis

The effect of anonymity on altruism was examined in a social discounting task with hypothetical rewards. Social discounting – the rate at which increases in social distance decrease value to the participant – was compared across three groups. Participants in the Anonymous group were told that recipients would not know who they were. Participants in the Observed group were asked to imagine that each of their choices was being observed by the recipient. Participants in the Standard group were given no special instructions with respect to anonymity or identity. Social discounting was measured at each of 7 social distances ranging from first closest friend or relative to the 100th closest. Social discount rates for all three groups were well described by hyperbolic functions. Participants in the Observed group were willing to forgo more money for the benefit of others (were more altruistic) than were those in the other two groups. Although participants in the Anonymous group, with no prospect of reciprocation, were willing to forgo less money for the sake of others than were those in the Observed group, they did express willingness to forgo significant amounts. This is some evidence that individual altruistic acts cannot be explained wholly by the possibility of reciprocation.