Abstract

This study examined if and how making intertemporal decisions on behalf of others influenced temporal discounting. Temporal discounting, the tendency to devalue delayed rewards, can be thought of as a proxy of impulsive decision-making. Two hundred adult Americans completed the Monetary Choice Questionnaire (MCQ) on behalf of either one close friend, five close friends, one distant acquaintance, or five distant acquaintances. Based on construal level theory, I hypothesized that when participants made decisions on behalf of a stranger, it would induce high-level construal and reduce temporal discounting. I also hypothesized that increasing group size from one to five would reduce temporal discounting for the acquaintance condition and increase temporal discounting for the friend condition. Results did not find significant differences in overall temporal discounting rates (k) between the conditions. This may indicate that temporal discounting is not sensitive to social distance information; however, this study also provides limited evidence suggesting that social distance may interact with temporal distance to influence temporal discounting. The constraints of the MCQ restrict the ability to test for this interaction, so future research is necessary to investigate the possibility. If the identified trends in this study represent real-life decision-making, it would mean that making intertemporal monetary decisions on behalf of close friends or family increases self-controlled decision-making only when the time difference is within a few months. In contrast, making intertemporal monetary decisions on behalf of distant acquaintances increases self-controlled decision-making when the time difference is longer than a few months.

Advisor

Scheibe, Dan

Department

Psychology

Disciplines

Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms | Cognitive Psychology | Psychology | Social Psychology

Keywords

Decision-Making, Self-Control, Intertemporal Decisions

Publication Date

2025

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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