The effects of intertemporal and interpersonal distance on choice

Suny At Stony Brook, Stony Brook NY

Investigators

Abstract

Cooperation are critical to productivity and economic well-being in settings where teamwork is efficient. Likewise, patience is critical to economic prosperity to the extent it enables individuals to adequately save and invest for the future. Unfortunately, failure of social cooperation (selfishness) and failure of self-control (impulsiveness or addiction) are pervasive problems in American society. The research undertaken here develops and extends a model of decision making in which there is a close correspondence between decisions to behave cooperatively versus selfishly and decisions to behave patiently versus impatiently. Cooperation and patience are motivated by thinking in terms of "what we should do" where the "we" in intertemporal choices are one's current and future selves. Selfish and impatient behavior is motivated by thinking in terms of "what I should do." The modeling approach suggests that economically beneficial behaviors in both domains may be brought about by training or otherwise inducing people to frame decisions one way versus the other. The proposed research posits that intertemporal and interpersonal cooperation are extensions of the self along the two dimensions: time and social space. Extension in time leads to self-control; extension in social space leads to social cooperation and altruism. A number of experiments will establish the quantitative relationship of these two dimensions and enable modeling of the surface created by discounting along both of them. The model will lead to a wider understanding of that nature of intertemporal and social preferences.