金钱崇拜对个体跨期决策偏好的影响

采用经典跨期选择任务范式,以个体的金钱喜好差异为切入点,通过问卷调查和行为实验考察金钱崇拜对个体跨期决策偏好的影响。结果发现:(1)个体的金钱崇拜水平与其跨期折扣倾向显著负相关;(2)无论跨期决策任务的难易和兑现时间的长短,高金钱崇拜者更倾向于选择较大的延迟奖赏,而低金钱崇拜者更倾向于选择较小的即时奖赏;(3)高、低金钱崇拜者的跨期决策反应时没有明显的差异,但二者的反应时都明显地受到任务难度的影响,即在容易条件下的反应速度显著快些。结果表明,个体的金钱崇拜水平在跨期决策过程中发挥着重要的作用,致使高金钱崇拜者更愿意等待延迟大奖赏的到来。     

A Closer Look at the Yardstick: A New Discount Rate Measure with Precision and Range

In intertemporal choice research, choice tasks (i.e., choosing between $80 today and $100 in a year) are often used to elicit a discount rate. The discount rate derived from a choice task, however, is largely restricted by the granularities and ranges of the questions asked. We examined this restriction in three popular discount rate measurements using simulations and experiments, and we propose an alternative procedure (Three‐option Adaptive Discount rate measure (ToAD)), which is capable of measuring a wide range of discount rates (from approximately .035% to 350 000% annual percentage rate) with high precision using 10 questions, in under a minute. ToAD can be easily implemented in online surveys (i.e., Qualtrics). Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

跨期决策中的负折扣现象及其机制

主流跨期决策模型认为, 跨期决策存在一个时间折扣过程。时间折扣是指人们会根据将来获益或损失的延迟时间对其效用进行折扣, 折扣后的效用小于原来的效用, 而负折扣现象违背了时间折扣过程。负折扣现象出现在金钱、非金钱的获益与损失领域, 其可能的解释机制为预期情绪。目前关于负折扣现象的研究, 较少验证其影响机制, 未来的研究可以结合眼动追踪和fMRI技术探讨其机制, 并丰富对负折扣现象的影响因素研究。     

When Intertemporal Rewards Are Hedonic,Larger Units of Wait Time Boost Patience

In intertemporal choices between smaller‐sooner (SS) and larger‐later (LL) rewards, five studies reveal that patience for the LL option is influenced by an interactive effect of the measurement units used to express wait time (large vs. small) and the type of the reward (hedonic vs. utilitarian). Specifically, larger time units boost patience, but more so when rewards are hedonic rather than utilitarian. In line with the numerosity heuristic, the effect of time units on patience is mediated by larger time units shrinking wait time perception. This effect arises because hedonic (vs. utilitarian) rewards promote a reliance on heuristics rather than systematic calculations. Therefore, a more calculative mindset diminishes the effect of units even for hedonic rewards and eliminates the hedonic‐utilitarian asymmetry. These results contribute to research on numerosity, intertemporal choice, and hedonic‐utilitarian differences, and offer a simple tool for practitioners to influence patience.     

When waiting to choose increases patience

We explore how waiting to choose influences patience. We propose that waiting to make an intertemporal choice increases the assumed value of the items for which people are waiting, leading them to become more patient. Five studies support this model. Study 1 finds that after waiting to choose, people exhibit greater patience than if they had not waited or before they had started to wait. Studies 2a and 2b find that increased valuation (rather than decreased cost of the wait) mediates the impact of waiting on patience. Study 3 further finds that whereas waiting to choose increases preference for a larger-later (over smaller-sooner) item, it also increases willingness to pay to expedite delivery of a single item. Finally, study 4 shows the waiting effect is stronger for hedonic than for utilitarian products. These studies modify existing theory by identifying the conditions under which waiting to choose can improve patience.     

不确定性容忍度对跨期选择的影响及其情景依赖性

采用2(不确定性容忍度：高、低)×2(跨期日期：今天/14天、今天/180天)×2(延迟奖赏值：200元、1000元)混合实验设计,探讨不同任务特征下不确定性容忍度对跨期选择的影响。结果表明：跨期日期为180天时,不确定性容忍度主效应边缘显著;不确定性容忍度与延迟奖赏值交互作用显著：在200元时低容忍度个体对延迟奖赏的折扣程度大于高容忍度个体,在1000元时无此效应;跨期日期为14天时,不确定性容忍度的主效应及其与延迟奖赏值交互作用均不显著。这表明,不确定性容忍度对跨期选择存在影响,但这种影响受到跨期日期和延迟奖赏值的调节,具有情景依赖性。     

The magnitude effect: Temporal discount rates and restaurant tips

Decision makers show a larger subjective temporal discount rate for small magnitudes than for large ones. That is, they demand a larger percent increase in value to compensate for a delay when they are waiting for a small amount of money than for a large amount. Prelec and Loewenstein (1991; see also Loewenstein & Prelec, 1992) proposed an increasing proportional sensitivity account of this magnitude effect. This account surmises that the magnitude effect stems from the utility function for money and is consequently not unique to intertemporal choice. One study tested this prediction by demonstrating the magnitude effect in two domains: intertemporal choice and tipping for restaurant meals, haircuts, and taxi rides. In intertemporal choice, subjects showed a larger discount rate for smaller monetary amounts. They also tipped a larger percentage on small bills than on large bills. Thus, both domains showed the magnitude effect; however, the size of the effect was not well correlated between domains.     

时间感知在跨期决策中的作用——时间决策模型的新探索

“时间”是跨期决策的“必需品”, 人们感知到的延迟时间决定跨期决策的结果。近年来, 研究者发现“时间长度感知”、“时间资源感知”和“时间框架感知”是时间感知作用于跨期决策的主要方式。时间感知的神经作用机制包含微观层面和宏观层面两种。“对数/指数时间折扣模型”、“感知时间基础模型”及“多模态漂移扩散模型”解释了时间感知的作用方式。然而, 现有理论模型还存在诸多局限, 主要包括“长短时距预测偏差”和“实际决策与预期决策偏差”两个方面。因此, 深入探讨时间感知影响跨期决策的基本方式, 分析现有理论模型的局限性并提出整合的机制框架具有十分重要的意义。未来研究亟需进一步整合时间感知的理论模型, 开展脑机制与应用方面的研究, 从深层揭露时间感知的作用本质, 帮助个人与社会更理性地决策。     

Intertemporal Similarity: Discounting as a Last Resort

Standard models of intertemporal choice assume that individuals discount future payoffs by integrating reward amounts and time delays to generate a discounted value. Alternative models propose that, rather than integrate across them, individuals compare within attributes (amounts and delays) to determine if differences in one attribute outweigh differences in another attribute. For instance, the similarity model 1) compares the two reward amounts to determine whether they are similar, 2) compares the similarity of the two time delays, and then 3) makes a decision based on these similarity judgments. Here, I tested discounting models against attribute‐based models that use similarity judgments to make choices. I collected intertemporal choices and similarity judgments for the reward amounts and time delays from participants in three experiments. All experiments tested the ability of discounting and similarity models to predict intertemporal choices. Model generalization analyses showed that the best predicting models started with similarity judgments and then, if similarity failed to make a prediction, resorted to discounting models. Similarity judgments also matched intertemporal choice data demonstrating both the magnitude and sign effects, thereby accounting for behavioral data that contradict many discounting models. These results highlight the possibility that attribute‐based models such as the similarity models provide alternatives to discounting that may offer insights into the process of making intertemporal choices. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An unintended consequence of social distance regulations: COVID-19 social distancing promotes the desire for money

Social distance regulations have been widely adopted during the global COVID-19 pandemic. From an evolutionary perspective, social connection and money are interchangeable subsistence resources for human survival. The substitutability principle of human motivation posits that scarcity in one domain (e.g., social connection) could motivate people to acquire or maintain resources in another domain (e.g., money). Two experiments were conducted to test the possibility that COVID-19 social distancing enhances the desire for money. Results showed that compared with controls, participants receiving social distancing primes (via recollection of experiences of social distancing or a Chinese glossary-search task) offered less money in the dictator game, showed lower willingness towards charitable donation (Experiment 1; N = 102), donated less money to a student fund, and rated money as having more importance (Experiment 2; N = 140). Our findings have far-reaching implications for financial decisions, charitable donations, and prosociality during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Advice seeking and loaning of money related to relapse in recovery homes

Recovery homes help individuals who have completed substance use treatment programs re‐integrate back into the community. However, it is unclear what factors determine who will succeed in these settings and how these factors may be reinforced or undermined by the social interactions and social networks between residents living in the Oxford House recovery homes. In an effort to better understand these factors, the current study evaluated (a) the extent to which the density of social networks (i.e., friendship, willingness to loan money, and advice‐seeking relationships) is associated with social capital (i.e., sense of community, quality of life, hopefulness, self‐efficacy), and (b) whether the density of social networks predicts relapse over time. Among the findings, willingness to loan money was positively associated with all four individual‐level social capital variables, suggesting that availability of instrumental resources may be important to ongoing recovery. To test whether these house‐level social network factors then support recovery, a survival analysis was conducted, finding associations between relapse risk and the network densities over a 28‐month span. In particular, more dense advice‐seeking networks were associated with higher rates of relapse, suggesting that the advice‐seeking might represent a sign of organisational house problems, with many residents unsure of issues related to their recovery. In contrast, more dense loaning networks were associated with less relapse, so willingness to lend money could be measuring a willingness to help those in need. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Individual Differences in Delay Discounting: Differences are Quantitative with Gains,but Qualitative with Losses

Research on delay discounting and inter‐temporal choice has yielded significant insights into decision making. Although research has focused on delayed gains, the discounting of losses is potentially important in precisely those areas where the discounting of gains has proved informative (e.g., substance use and abuse). Participants in the current study completed both a questionnaire consisting of choices between immediate and delayed gains and an analogous questionnaire consisting of choices between immediate and delayed losses. For almost all participants, the likelihood of choosing the delayed gain decreased with increases in the wait until it would be received. In contrast, when losses (i.e., payments) were involved, different participants showed quite different patterns of choices. More specifically, although the majority of the participants became increasingly likely to choose to pay later as the delay was increased, some participants appeared to be debt averse, in that they were more likely to choose the immediate payment option when the delay was long than when it was brief. These debt‐averse participants also were more likely to choose to wait for a larger delayed gain than other participants and scored lower on Impulsiveness than those who showed the typical pattern of discounting delayed losses. Taken together, these results suggest that in the case of delayed gains, people differ only quantitatively (i.e., in how steeply they discount), whereas in the case of delayed losses, people differ qualitatively as well as quantitatively, contrary to the common assumption that a single impulsivity trait underlies choices between immediate and delayed outcomes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Money for microbes—Pathogen avoidance and out‐group helping behaviour

Humans have evolved various adaptations against pathogens, including the physiological immune system. However, not all of these adaptations are physiological: the cognitive mechanisms whereby we avoid potential sources of pathogens—for example, disgust elicited by uncleanliness—can be considered as parts of a behavioural immune system (BIS). The mechanisms of BIS extend also to inter‐group relations: Pathogen cues have been shown to increase xenophobia/ethnocentrism, as people prefer to keep their societal in‐group norms unaltered and “clean.” Nonetheless, little is known how pathogen cues influence people's willingness to provide humanitarian aid to out‐group members. We examined how pathogen cues affected decisions of providing humanitarian aid in either instrumental (sending money) or non‐instrumental form (sending personnel to help, or accepting refugees), and whether these effects were moderated by individual differences in BIS sensitivity. Data were collected in two online studies (Ns: 188 and 210). When the hypothetical humanitarian crisis involved a clear risk of infection, participants with high BIS sensitivity preferred to send money rather than personnel or to accept refugees. The results suggest that pathogen cues influence BIS‐sensitive individuals' willingness to provide humanitarian aid when there is a risk of contamination to in‐group members.     

Time discounting over the lifespan

Several theories of intertemporal choice predict systematic age differences in the rate at which people discount the future. Different theories, however, predict different patterns: one predicts that discounting will decrease over the lifespan, so that young people will discount more than the middle aged or elderly, another suggests it will increase over the lifespan, and yet another suggests that the middle-aged will discount less than either the young or the old. We conduct a study testing these predictions. 123 respondents between the ages of 19 and 89 made a large number of time discounting decisions on both computerized and paper-and-pencil questionnaires. The results suppported the view that older people discount more than younger ones, and that middle aged people discount less than either group. This finding appears to contrast with earlier work (Green, Fry, & Myerson, 1994) but, as we show, our results are remarkably congruent with that study. We conclude by considering whether our results can be reconciled with the fact that young people commit more apparently impulsive acts than do the elderly.     

文化价值观是一种特殊货币形式

金钱是一种经人们约定的用来测量商品价值的独特测量工具。同样地, 文化价值也是能让人对自身价值做出一致评价的一种独特的测量工具。本文在综述有关研究的基础上提出一个观点：文化价值和金钱价值在人类的发展史上、神经机制、行为以及认知方面是重叠的。作者认为, 文化价值和货币都是基于类似的进化功能而产生的。其次, 当进行与社会价值观一致的活动(如捐赠和合作)时, 其行为所激活的脑区和获得金钱时所激活的脑区是相同的。同样地, 当进行违反社会价值观的活动(如欺骗和攻击)时, 其行为所激活的脑区和失去金钱所激活的脑区是相同的。第三, 相对于亲社会行为和获得金钱, 我们对社会背叛和失去金钱会更敏感(如厌恶损失)。第四, 全球化对金钱体系和价值体系的影响是相似的。     

Feelings of dread and intertemporal choice

It frequently has been observed that people discount future rewards relative to present rewards. However, the literature on intertemporal choices involving emotional upsets and losses is fraught with inconsistencies, with some studies finding similar discounting of gains and losses, and others reporting that participants elect to undergo negative experiences sooner rather than later. To help resolve these contradictions, time preferences for different types of aversive experiences (social rejection, embarrassment, pain, monetary and property loss) were examined in five studies. Most participants preferred to postpone monetary and property losses, but intertemporal choices for other unpleasant experiences showed highly variable responses, with some participants deferring them as long as possible, and many electing to experience them immediately. Time preferences for these negative experiences were correlated, but were independent of time preference for rewards. It is argued (following Loewenstein, 1987 ) that anticipation of dread plays a key role in many people's choices about timing of aversive experiences. This interpretation was supported by choices about when to learn of a very unpleasant event whose timing was fixed (Study 3), and by a novel preference reversal (Study 4). Study 5 examined how actual and hypothetical experiences of dread unfolded over time; the results were consistent with a dread‐based interpretation of choices in the preceding studies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Giving,Fast and Slow: Reflection Increases Costly (but Not Uncostly) Charitable Giving

Are people intuitively generous or stingy? Does reflection make people more willing to give generous amounts to charity? Findings across the literature are mixed, with many studies finding no clear relationship between reflection and charitable giving (e.g., Hauge, Brekke, Johansson, Johansson‐Stenman, & Svedsäter, 2016 ; Tinghög et al., 2016 ), while others find that reflection negatively affects giving (e.g., Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007 ), and still others find that reflection is positively associated with giving (e.g., Lohse, Goeschl, & Diederich, 2014 ). I demonstrate that reflection consistently increases costly giving to charity. In Study 1, people were initially reluctant to give costly amounts of money to charity, but those who reflected about the decision were more willing to give. In Studies 2–3, I isolated the role of costly stakes by randomly assigning people to either an uncostly donation (Are people intuitively generous or stingy? Does reflection make people more willing to give generous amounts to charity? Findings across the literature are mixed, with many studies finding no clear relationship between reflection and charitable giving (e.g., Hauge, Brekke, Johansson, Johansson‐Stenman, & Svedsäter, 2016 ; Tinghög et al., 2016 ), while others find that reflection negatively affects giving (e.g., Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007 ), and still others find that reflection is positively associated with giving (e.g., Lohse, Goeschl, & Diederich, 2014 ). I demonstrate that reflection consistently increases costly giving to charity. In Study 1, people were initially reluctant to give costly amounts of money to charity, but those who reflected about the decision were more willing to give. In Studies 2–3, I isolated the role of costly stakes by randomly assigning people to either an uncostly donation ($0.40) or costly donation condition (e.g., $100), and randomly assigning them to decide under time pressure or after reflecting. Reflection increased their willingness to give costly amounts, but did not influence their willingness to give uncostly amounts. Similarly, the relationship between decision time and giving was positive when the stakes were costly but was relatively flat when the stakes were uncostly (Study 4). Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

资源的交换价值和工资性质对其分配公平感的影响

如何公平合理地分配有限的资源是每一个组织都要面对的基本问题。在组织资源分配中存在一个有趣的现象, 即平均分配金钱往往会比平均分配特定商品让人感到更不公平。前人研究认为, 这是因金钱较之特定的商品具有更多交换价值导致的。3个实验对这一重要的心理现象进行了重新研究发现, 不仅交换价值影响资源分配的公平感, 而且资源的工资性质对其分配的公平感也有重要影响。这一发现丰富了Adams的公平理论, 同时也为组织更好地分配资源提供重要参考。     

Smokers discount their drug of abuse in the same way as other consumable rewards

Recent research shows that drug abusers discount delayed monetary rewards more than nonabusers do, and they discount delayed substances of abuse (e.g., drugs) more than delayed money. Furthermore, non-drug-abusers discount food and substances of abuse (e.g., alcohol), more than money. Here, we compare the delay and probability discounting of money with that of a directly consumable reward (chocolate) and with that of a substance of abuse (cigarettes), in a drug-using population (smokers). In line with previous research, we found in two experiments that delay discounting differentiated between smokers and nonsmokers, and between money and a nonabused directly consumable reward (chocolate). In addition, our results show that there appears to be no difference in the extent to which smokers discount their abused substance compared to another directly consumable reward. These findings support the contention that drugs and food are part of the same category of primary reinforcers, whereas money is discounted differently, as a conditioned reinforcer.