Story, GW;
Kurth-Nelson, Z;
Crockett, M;
Vlaev, I;
Darzi, A;
Dolan, RJ;
(2020)
Social discounting of pain.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
10.1002/jeab.631.
(In press).
Preview |
Text
jeab.631.pdf - Published Version Download (1MB) | Preview |
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.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Social discounting of pain |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1002/jeab.631 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jeab.631 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 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. |
| Keywords: | social discounting, delay discounting, dread, pain, altruism, kin, humans, TIME PERCEPTION, ANTICIPATION, OTHERS, DELAY, CHOICE, SELF, PROBABILITY, PREFERENCE, VALUATION, IMMEDIATE |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Imaging Neuroscience |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10112930 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
