Journal article
Patience is a virtue: cooperative people have lower discount rates
- Abstract:
- Reciprocal altruism involves foregoing an immediate benefit for the sake of a greater long-term reward. It follows that individuals who exhibit a stronger preference for future over immediate rewards should be more disposed to engage in reciprocal altruism – in other words, ‘patient’ people should be more cooperative. The present study tested this prediction by investigating whether participants’ contributions in a public-good game correlated with their ‘discount rate’. The hypothesis was supported: patient people are indeed more cooperative. The paper discusses alternative interpretations of this result, and makes some suggestions for future research.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
- Journal:
- Personality and Individual Differences More from this journal
- Volume:
- 44
- Issue:
- 3
- Pages:
- 780-785
- Publication date:
- 2008-02-01
- DOI:
- ISSN:
-
0191-8869
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- UUID:
-
uuid:6534ac0c-96d5-4a84-b90c-9a9d05e7a0c1
- Local pid:
-
ora:3072
- Deposit date:
-
2009-11-25
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Elsevier Ltd
- Copyright date:
- 2007
- Notes:
- The full-text of this article is not available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the DOI or publisher copy links on this record page. [N.B. Oliver Curry is now based at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford.]
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