Temporal discounting mediates the relationship between socio-economic status and social trust

Abstract

Social trust and income are associated both within and across countries, such that higher income typically correlates with increased trust. While this correlation is well-documented, the psychological mechanisms sustaining this relationship remain poorly understood. One plausible candidate is people’s temporal discounting: on the one hand, trust has a strong time component—it exposes the individual to immediate costs in exchange of uncertain and delayed benefits; on the other hand, temporal discounting is robustly influenced by income. The goal of our studies was to test whether temporal discounting mediates the relationship between income and trust and whether experimentally manipulating perceived income has a downstream impact on temporal discounting and trust. To do so, participants who underestimated their relative income position received information about their true position in the income distribution in order to correct their misperception. Our results indicate that temporal discounting partially mediates the effect of income on social trust in a pre-registered online study on British participants ( N = 855). However, receiving a positive information shock on one’s income position had no impact on either temporal discounting or social trust. In a second pre-registered study, we replicated the finding that temporal discounting partially mediates the effect of income on social trust in a representative sample of the British population ( N = 1130).

Short-term changes in financial situation have immediate mental health consequences: Implications for social policy

“…Second, our study was unusual in including measures of time preference and risk taking. Although socioeconomic gradients in those variables have often been documented (Donkers et al, 2001;Green et al, 1996;Guillou et al, 2022;Reimers et al, 2009), the studies have generally been cross-sectional, or before-after studies of one-off shocks (Boon-Falleur et al, 2022;Callen, 2015;Cassar et al, 2017;Hanaoka et al, 2018;Page et al, 2014), rather than examining ongoing fluctuations over time. Finally, our study was unusual in being able to disaggregate the component of financial hardship which is due to changes in incomes from that which is due to changes in costs.…”

“…Poverty is associated with a number of important psychological variables. These include greater anxious and depressed mood (Gallo & Matthews, 1999;Kessler et al, 1994;Lorant et al, 2003;McMillan et al, 2010); steeper time discounting (the relative preference for smaller, sooner over larger, later rewards) (Green et al, 1996;Guillou et al, 2022;Haushofer & Fehr, 2014;Reimers et al, 2009); and reduced risk preference (the relative preference for actions whose payoff is more variable compared to less) (Donkers et al, 2001;Haushofer & Fehr, 2014) . These associations have been documented for decades.…”

Prosocial religions as folk-technologies of mutual policing

“…In line with this logic, the relationship between high trust and low religiosity is not only observed between countries, but also between individuals within countries. Synchronically, within the same cultural group and among individuals governed by the same group-level political institutions, individuals of higher socio-economic status, who are known to exhibit higher social trust (Guillou et al, 2021;Nettle, 2015;Stamos et al, 2019), believe less that belief in god is necessary for moral behavior (Tamir et al, 2020), are less religious, and invest less in organized, moralistic religions (Houtman & Aupers, 2007;Houtman & Mascini, 2002;Silveus & Stoddard, 2020;Storm, 2017). Diachronically, too, time series data both within the United States and in European countries indicate that the fall of organized religions between 1981 and the 2000's is driven by younger cohorts rejecting the moralistic values of organized religions as these cohorts develop more individualistic values of emancipation from traditional social controls (Hout & Fischer, 2014;Houtman & Aupers, 2007;Houtman & Mascini, 2002; see also Houtman et al, 2009;Inglehart, 2020).…”

Moral disciplining: The cognitive and evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality

“…In line with this idea, the particularly rich environments in which puritanism declines lead to the development of more inherently self-controlled psychologies. People living in materially safer environments, compared to people living in poverty, are spontaneously more self-controlled (Dohmen, Enke, Falk, Huffman, & Sunde, 2018;Pepper & Nettle, 2017;Sheehy-Skeffington, 2020), invest more in extended prosociality (Holland, Silva, & Mace, 2012;Lettinga, Jacquet, André, Baumand, & Chevallier, 2020;Nettle, 2015;Silva & Mace, 2014;Zwirner & Raihani, 2020), are less susceptible to impulsive defection or retaliation (McCullough, Pedersen, Schroder, Tabak, & Carver, 2012), and have higher trust in others (Alesina & La Ferrara, 2002;Guillou, Grandin, & Chevallier, 2021;Ortiz-Ospina & Roser, 2016;Petersen & Aarøe, 2015).…”