Social discounting: The effects of manipulating construal level and distance to socially closer person

In temporal discounting, when a smaller and sooner reward is selected over a larger and more delayed reward, the addition of a constant delay to both outcomes results in preference reversals. The present experimental study investigates preference reversals in social discounting, that is, allocating rewards based on social distance. The experiment was carried out on 140 participants asked to make hypothetical choices between a smaller reward for a socially closer person and a larger reward for a more distant person. The results showed that shifting both rewards by a constant and relatively large social distance caused a decrease of the discounting rate but only when concrete thinking about the recipients was not primed by the instructions. Shifting the rewards by a constant and relatively small distance caused steeper discounting, regardless of the type of instructions. Similarities and differences between temporal and social discounting are discussed in the context of these findings.