The effect of delay and social distance in the dictator and ultimatum games.

The previous research shows that delaying a reward in the dictator game contributes to less generous offers. If the reason for such results is temporal discounting, it can be expected that the effect of delay would be stronger for persons with a higher discounting rate, as well as the analogous pattern should occur in the ultimatum game. The participants of our study took decisions in the dictator and ultimatum game as proposers and responders. We manipulated delay of a reward (from immediate to in 5 years) and social distance (from the closest person to known only by sight). We observed the expected but weak interaction effect between delay and temporal discounting. However, the correlational analyses did not confirm the significant relationship between temporal discounting and decisions taken in dictator and ultimatum games. Moreover, the offers decline with the social distance, both in the dictator and ultimatum game. However, the social distance does not affect the value of the accepted offer in the ultimatum game. Such a discrepancy between donors' behaviour and beneficiaries' expectations may form a subtle but significant failure of the real-world donation markets.

Delaying rewards has greater effect on altruism when the beneficiary is socially distant.

Based on the assumption that social distance and time are dimensions of psychological distance important for altruistic choices it was predicted that enhancement of altruism due to delaying rewards when choosing between a reward for oneself and for another person would be more pronounced the greater the social distance between the subject and another person. In order to test this hypothesis, social discounting using hypothetical monetary rewards and manipulation of social distance and reward delay was measured in a group of 161 college students. The results indicate that delaying rewards increasingly enhances preference for altruistic choices as the social distance between subject and beneficiary grows.

Social discounting: Choice between rewards for other people.

The purpose of the present study was to test the prediction that when two rewards, a smaller but "socially closer" one and a larger but "socially more distant" one, are moved away from the subject by the same social distance, subjective value of the socially more distant reward will increase (i.e. the rate of social discounting will be shallower). The effect was absent when the recipients were moved back 10 places, but emerged when they were moved back 20 places. In addition, the hyperbolic model was found to correctly describe choices between two socially distant rewards. The results confirm similarities between social and temporal discounting.

Social discounting: The effect of outcome uncertainty.

The purpose of the study was to determine the lowest hypothetical amount a participant would keep for himself/herself, preferring it over a reward that he/she would have shared with another individual representing various levels of past reciprocation. Other manipulated aspects were: emotional closeness of the receiver (close vs. distant person), procedure for deciding on how to share the reward (mutual decision vs. decision made by partner) and amount of reward to be shared (PLN 494 vs. PLN 49,400). It was found that preference for the reward to be shared increased as a function of reciprocity, and that it is higher when sharing with an emotionally close person, when the decision does not depend entirely on the partner, and when sharing a small reward. The effect of the level of reciprocity was the smallest when the reward was shared with an emotionally close person and the decision was mutual.