Abstract
Social discounting occurs when participants share more of a reward with individuals with whom they are close to, relative to those more distant individuals. Previous social discounting studies have shown consistent effects of drug use and reward magnitude on sharing. However, previous cross-cultural social discounting studies have not incorporated reward magnitude or drug use as factors that may influence discounting. The current experiment randomized 569 American and Japanese university students into either a standard ($150; ¥15,500) or large ($1,500; ¥155,000) magnitude condition where participants made choices about allocating hypothetical rewards to individuals at varying social distances. Participants also self-reported cigarette and alcohol use. There was no social discounting difference between American and Japanese participants at the standard reward magnitude. However, American participants shared more than Japanese participants at the large reward magnitude, replicating a previous study. Only Japanese participants showed a magnitude effect. Including age, gender, or cigarette and alcohol use as covariates did not change the main findings. However, similar to previous social discounting studies, cigarette use was a significant predictor for social discounting. Cross-cultural social discounting differences between American and Japanese participants were accounted for by reward magnitude.
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Notes
s values, which are analogous to k-values in delay discounting (see Jones & Rachlin, 2006), were also calculated for each subject using nonlinear regression with a hyperbolic model (e.g., Reed, Kaplan, & Brewer, 2012). Only 359 of the 507 (71%) participants’ s-values could be estimated because of both increasing and decreasing indifference points with decreasing social proximity. Therefore, we focused our analysis on AUC. s-values were significantly skewed towards lower values (skewness = 3.93; kurtosis = 18.91). Natural log transformed s-values were normally distributed (skewness = 0.04; kurtosis = 0.14). Mean ln s values are included in the results section as a point of reference and comparison to previous research. However, given the large percentage of participants whose data could not be estimated using nonlinear regression, and the data shown in Fig. 2, the reader is cautioned against any firm conclusions using this data.
The results of a 2 × 2 ANOVA using ln s and only including country and reward magnitude as factors showed the following results. There was no significant main effect for either country (F(1, 355) = 2.31; p = 0.13), reward magnitude (F(1, 355) = 0.95; p = 0.33), or a significant interaction between country and reward magnitude (F(1, 355) = 3.07; p = 0.08). Unlike the AUC data, the larger difference between American and Japanese participants appeared to be at the standard magnitude condition (US μ s = 0.29 [σs = 0.49]; Japan μ s = 0.21 [0.49]), with Japanese participants sharing more than American participants. At the large magnitude condition (US μ s = 0.23 [0.38]; Japan μ s = 0.21 [0.29]), there was little difference between the two groups.
The results of the 2 × 2 ANCOVA using ln s were identical to that using ln AUC. That is, only cigarette use (F = 5.22, p = 0.02) and the interaction between country and magnitude (F = 7.99, p < 0.01) were significant predictors of ln s.
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All participants were informed of their rights as human participants in a psychology experiment. Institutional review board acceptance was obtained before data collection at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and after data collection at Ryutsu Keizai University, which is standard practice for each institution, respectively.
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Romanowich, P., Igaki, T. Effects of reward magnitude, alcohol and cigarette use on social discounting in Japan and United States college students. Psychol Rec 67, 345–353 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-017-0218-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-017-0218-3