Cultural differences in intertemporal decision making: A comparison between Chile and China
Culture bends the steepness, not the shape, of the delay-discount curve.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Raineri et al. (2024) asked college students in Chile and China to choose between smaller money now or larger money later.
They used fake cash amounts from small to large.
The goal was to see if culture changes how steeply people discount future rewards.
What they found
Chilean students took the smaller-sooner option more often than Chinese students.
The hyperboloid curve fit both groups well, except when the fake amount was the biggest.
How this fits with other research
Kim et al. (2024) showed the same hyperbolic pattern holds in U.S. second-graders saving tokens.
Green et al. (2004) saw the same curve in pigeons and rats, but reward size did not change the slope.
Raineri’s human data now show culture can change the slope, adding a new layer to the animal work.
Why it matters
If you test delay discounting, expect the curve shape to stay hyperboloid but the steepness to shift with culture.
Use the same model for Chilean and Chinese clients, but plan for faster discounting in Chilean clients.
This keeps your data analysis consistent while you watch for cultural variables that change rate, not form.
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Join Free →Run a five-trial delay-choice probe and plot the points; if the curve bends, fit a hyperboloid, not a straight line.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
A cross-cultural comparison is made of delay discounting in samples of participants from Chile and China. Comparisons are made based on previous literature that suggests that individuals from an Asian culture should be willing to postpone delayed rewards more than are individuals from a Latin American culture. To test the cross-cultural validity of a hyperbolic discounting model, the model was fitted to both data sets. Additionally, a self-enhancement measure was evaluated as a potential mediator between culture of origin and delay discounting. Seventy-eight college students from China and 120 college students from Chile, with similar demographic backgrounds, discounted hypothetical monetary outcomes using an adjusting-amount titration procedure. Additionally, participants completed a self-enhancement measure. Age, academic major, gender, and grade point average were controlled. Chilean participants discounted much more steeply than Chinese nationals did. No support was obtained for the mediation of self-enhancement between culture of origin and degree of delay discounting. In both samples, delay discounting was better described by a hyperboloid than an exponential function, the only exception being the $10,000 condition in which the medians for Chilean participants' present subjective value were equally well explained by a hyperboloid and an exponential function.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2024 · doi:10.1002/jeab.859