The social contagion of temporal discounting in small social networks

Decisions often require a tradeoff between immediate and long-term gratification. How individuals resolve such tradeoffs reflects constructs such as temporal discounting, the degree that individuals devalue delayed rewards. Recent research has started to focus on temporal decisions made in collabora...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bixter, M.T (Author), Luhmann, C.C (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:View Fulltext in Publisher
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020 |a 23657464 (ISSN) 
245 1 0 |a The social contagion of temporal discounting in small social networks 
260 0 |b Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH  |c 2021 
856 |z View Fulltext in Publisher  |u https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00249-y 
520 3 |a Decisions often require a tradeoff between immediate and long-term gratification. How individuals resolve such tradeoffs reflects constructs such as temporal discounting, the degree that individuals devalue delayed rewards. Recent research has started to focus on temporal decisions made in collaborative contexts (e.g., dyads, small groups). Results suggest that directly interacting with others leads to revisions in preferences, such that decision makers become more similar to their collaborative partners over time (e.g., more patient following collaboration with a patient other). What remains to be seen is whether this social influence extends to indirect social effects, such as when an individual influences another’s preferences through a shared collaborative partner. In the current study, the focus was on decisions regarding hypothetical monetary rewards. Groups of three participated in a collaborative decision-making chain, in which network member X collaborated with member Y, who then subsequently collaborated with member Z. Though network members X and Z never directly interacted, a significant indirect link was observed between member X’s pre-collaborative decision preferences and member Z’s post-collaborative decision preferences. These results demonstrate that temporal decision preferences can be transmitted through intervening connections in a small social network (i.e., social contagion), showing that indirect social influence can be empirically observed and measured in controlled environments. © 2021, The Author(s). 
650 0 4 |a adult 
650 0 4 |a article 
650 0 4 |a decision making 
650 0 4 |a Decision making 
650 0 4 |a delay discounting 
650 0 4 |a Direct influence 
650 0 4 |a human 
650 0 4 |a Indirect influence 
650 0 4 |a monetary reward 
650 0 4 |a Small groups 
650 0 4 |a Social contagion 
650 0 4 |a Social influence 
650 0 4 |a social network 
650 0 4 |a Temporal discounting 
700 1 |a Bixter, M.T.  |e author 
700 1 |a Luhmann, C.C.  |e author 
773 |t Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications