Social discounting of pain
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Impatience can be formalized as a delay discount rate, describing how the subjective value of reward decreases as it is delayed. By analogy, selfishness can be formalized as a social discount rate, representing how the subjective value of rewarding another person decreases with increasing social distance. Delay and social discount rates for reward are correlated across individuals. However no previous work has examined whether this relationship also holds for aversive outcomes. Neither has previous work described a functional form for social discounting of pain in humans. This is a pertinent question, since preferences over aversive outcomes formally diverge from those for reward. We addressed this issue in an experiment in which healthy adult participants (N = 67) chose the timing and intensity of hypothetical pain for themselves and others. In keeping with previous studies, participants showed a strong preference for immediate over delayed pain. Participants showed greater concern for pain in close others than for their own pain, though this hyperaltruism was steeply discounted with increasing social distance. Impatience for pain and social discounting of pain were weakly correlated across individuals. Our results extend a link between impatience and selfishness to the aversive domain.
Date Issued
2020-10-07
Date Acceptance
2020-09-04
Citation
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2020, 114 (3), pp.308-325
ISSN
0022-5002
Publisher
Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
Start Page
308
End Page
325
Journal / Book Title
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
Volume
114
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2020 The Authors. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Sponsor
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust- BRC Funding
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000575552500001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Grant Number
RDB04
Subjects
Social Sciences
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Psychology, Biological
Behavioral Sciences
Psychology, Experimental
Psychology
social discounting
delay discounting
dread
pain
altruism
kin
humans
TIME PERCEPTION
ANTICIPATION
OTHERS
DELAY
CHOICE
SELF
PROBABILITY
PREFERENCE
VALUATION
IMMEDIATE
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2020-10-07