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A ratio scale for social distance
Author(s) -
Safin Vasiliy,
Rachlin Howard
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1002/jeab.614
Subject(s) - closeness , social distance , scale (ratio) , power function , statistics , function (biology) , exponent , rank (graph theory) , psychology , discounting , social psychology , mathematics , econometrics , combinatorics , economics , mathematical analysis , physics , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , disease , finance , covid-19 , pathology , quantum mechanics , evolutionary biology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , biology
Choosing a larger–later reward over a smaller–sooner reward may be thought of as altruism toward one's future self. A question that arises in this connection is: What is the relation between delay and social discounting? To begin to answer this question, social and delay discount functions need to be comparable. Delay is ordinarily measured on a ratio scale (time), which allows for meaningful division and addition. Social distance is ordinarily measured on an ordinal scale (rank order of social closeness). To convert social distance to a ratio scale we use a psychophysical distance function obtained via magnitude estimation (Stevens, 1956). The distance functions obtained are well described by a power function (median exponent = 1.9); we show how they may be used to rescale ordinal to ratio social discount functions.