Many important decisions are taken not by the person who will ultimately gain or lose from the outcome, but on their behalf, by somebody else. We examined economic decision-making about risk and time in situations in which deciders chose for others who also chose for them. We propose that this unique setting, which has not been studied before, elicits perception of reciprocity that prompts a unique bias in preferences. We found that decision-makers are less patient (more discounting), and more risk averse for losses than gains, with other peoples’ money, especially when their choices for others are more uncertain. Those results were derived by exploiting a computational modeling framework that has been shown to account for the underlying psychological and neural decision processes. We propose a novel theoretical mechanism—precautionary preferences under social uncertainty, which explains the findings. Implications for future research and alternative models are also discussed.

中文翻译：

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他人的钱：互惠和社会不确定性在他人决策中的作用。

许多重要的决定不是由最终会从结果中获得或失去的人做出的，而是由其他人代表他们做出的。我们研究了在决策者为其他人也为他们选择的情况下关于风险和时间的经济决策。我们提出，这种以前从未被研究过的独特环境引发了对互惠的看法，从而引发了独特的偏好偏见。我们发现，决策者对他人的钱缺乏耐心（更多贴现），对损失的风险比收益更厌恶，尤其是当他们为他人做出的选择更加不确定时。这些结果是通过利用计算建模框架得出的，该框架已被证明可以解释潜在的心理和神经决策过程。我们提出了一种新的理论机制——社会不确定性下的预防偏好，这解释了研究结果。还讨论了对未来研究和替代模型的影响。