Stuff goes wrong, so act now

Riis-Vestergaard, Michala; Haushofer, Johannes

doi:10.1017/s0140525x17001091

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Indeed, it has been argued that people living in more deprived conditions suffer from higher collection risks because of a lack of control over future outcomes (e.g. Pepper and Nettle, 2017;Riis-Vestergaard and Haushofer, 2017). By contrast, in our model, discounting is actually predicted to be higher when individuals' decisions have the most impact on their state in terms of productivity and exposure to mortality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

“…In such contexts, variation in extrinsic mortality rates will not usually be large enough to explain differences in people's time horizon (Mell et al, 2017a;Riis-Vestergaard and Haushofer, 2017). For example, as pointed out by Riis-Vestergaard and Haushofer (2017), in a study reporting data on temporal discounting from 53 different countries (Wang et al, 2016), people discount 46% over one year while the average mortality risk per year in the countries in the dataset is only 0.148%, which can only account for 0.13% of the actual discounting. Other factors must therefore be considered to account for observed discount rates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Time is money. Waiting costs explain why selection favors steeper time discounting in deprived environments.

Mell¹,

Baumard²,

André³

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Individuals exposed to deprivation tend to show a characteristic behavioural syndrome suggestive of a short time horizon. This pattern has traditionally been attributed to the intrinsically higher unpredictability of deprived environments, which renders waiting for long term rewards more risky (i.e. collection risks are high). In the current paper, based on a simple dynamic life history model, we show that a significant portion of individuals’ propensity to discount future rewards might have a completely distinct origin. Upon collecting a resource, individuals have the opportunity to accumulate “capital” (e.g. grow muscular tissue, build a protective shelter, buy a car, etc.), which eventually increases their productivity and/or their chances of survival. As a result, delaying the collection of a resource creates an opportunity cost in the sense that during the waiting time, the benefits otherwise generated by the increment in capital are lost. These forgone benefits are independent of collection risks and constitute waiting costs per se. Using optimal control theory we show that these costs can lead to the evolution of short time horizons even in the complete absence of collection risks. Moreover, assuming diminishing returns to capital, we show that the evolutionarily stable time horizon increases with the amount of capital already owned by individuals. When individuals possess little capital, they have a lot of room to improve their productivity and/or survival, hence they should be impatient to collect resources; that is, their time horizon should be short. On the contrary, when individuals already possess a lot of capital, the benefits of further accumulation are plateauing, hence patience becomes a more profitable strategy and individuals should lengthen their time horizon. This means that individuals get more patient as they age and that people in deprivation, who still have important productive and survival needs that can be satisfied, should have a shorter time horizon. Moreover, beyond time horizon, our model shows that people with little capital should also be more risk averse than the more privileged. Taken together, these results lead us to interpret the behavioral constellation of deprivation in a new way.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time is money. Waiting costs explain why selection favors steeper time discounting in deprived environments.

Mell¹,

Baumard²,

André³

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Why should this affect their interest in cooperation today? The fact that someone is alive at age 60 or age 80 indeed has little impact on his or her probability of being alive tomorrow [129,130]. A recent theoretical model demonstrates that waiting costs (i.e., the cost paid by an individual even when the benefits are guaranteed) are another mechanism by which adverse environments can be associated with higher discount rates [131], and therefore decreased cooperation.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental adversity is associated with lower investment in collective actions

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Environmental adversity is associated with a wide range of biological outcomes and behaviors that seem to fulfill a need to favor immediate over long-term benefits. Adversity is also associated with decreased investment in cooperation, which is defined as a long-term strategy. Beyond establishing the correlation between adversity and cooperation, the channel through which this relationship arises remains unclear. We propose that this relationship is mediated by a present bias at the psychological level, which is embodied in the reproduction-maintenance trade-off at the biological level. We report two pre-registered studies applying structural equation models to test this relationship on large-scale datasets (the European Values Study and the World Values Survey). The present study replicates existing research linking adverse environments (both in childhood and in adulthood) with decreased investment in adult cooperation and finds that this association is indeed mediated by variations in individuals' reproduction-maintenance trade-off.

show abstract

“…Why should this affect their interest in cooperation today? The fact that someone is alive at age 60 or age 80 indeed has little impact on his or her probability of being alive tomorrow (Mell et al, 2017;Riis-Vestergaard & Haushofer, 2017). Another possibility is that people living in harsher environments cooperate less because they have less capital.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental harshness is associated with lower investment in collective actions

Lettinga

Jacquet

André

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although humans cooperate universally, there is variability across individuals, times and cultures in the amount of resources people invest in cooperative activities. The origins of such variability are not known but recent work highlights that variations in environmental harshness may play a key role. A growing body of experimental work in evolutionary psychology suggests that humans adapt to their specific environment by calibrating their lifehistory strategy. In this paper, we apply structural equation models to test the association between current and childhood environmental harshness, life-history strategy and adult cooperation in two large-scale datasets (the World Values Survey and the European Values Study). The present study replicates existing research linking a harsher environment (both in adulthood and in childhood) with a modulated reproduction-maintenance trade-off and extends these findings to the domain of collective actions. Specifically, we find that a harsher environment (both in adulthood and in childhood) is associated with decreased involvement in collective action and that this association is mediated by individuals' life-history strategy.

show abstract

Stuff goes wrong, so act now

Cited by 7 publications

References 4 publications

Time is money. Waiting costs explain why selection favors steeper time discounting in deprived environments.

Time is money. Waiting costs explain why selection favors steeper time discounting in deprived environments.

Environmental adversity is associated with lower investment in collective actions

Environmental harshness is associated with lower investment in collective actions

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About