Impatience can be formalized as a delay discount rate, describing how the subjective value of reward decreases as it is delayed. By analogy, selfishness can be formalized as a social discount rate, representing how the subjective value of rewarding another person decreases with increasing social distance. Delay and social discount rates for reward are correlated across individuals. However no previous work has examined whether this relationship also holds for aversive outcomes. Neither has previous work described a functional form for social discounting of pain in humans. This is a pertinent question, since preferences over aversive outcomes formally diverge from those for reward. We addressed this issue in an experiment in which healthy adult participants (N = 67) chose the timing and intensity of hypothetical pain for themselves and others. In keeping with previous studies, participants showed a strong preference for immediate over delayed pain. Participants showed greater concern for pain in close others than for their own pain, though this hyperaltruism was steeply discounted with increasing social distance. Impatience for pain and social discounting of pain were weakly correlated across individuals. Our results extend a link between impatience and selfishness to the aversive domain.

中文翻译：

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疼痛的社会折扣

不耐烦可以形式化为延迟贴现率，描述奖励的主观价值如何随着延迟而降低。以此类推，自私可以形式化为社会折扣率，表示奖励他人的主观价值如何随着社会距离的增加而降低。奖励的延迟和社会折扣率在个体之间是相关的。然而，以前没有研究过这种关系是否也适用于厌恶的结果。以前的工作也没有描述一种对人类疼痛进行社会折扣的功能形式。这是一个相关的问题，因为对厌恶结果的偏好正式不同于对奖励的偏好。我们在一项实验中解决了这个问题，其中健康的成年参与者（N= 67) 为自己和他人选择假设疼痛的时间和强度。与之前的研究一致，参与者表现出对即时疼痛而非延迟疼痛的强烈偏好。参与者对亲近他人的痛苦表现出比对自己的痛苦更大的关注，尽管随着社会距离的增加，这种过度利他主义被严重打折扣。对疼痛的不耐烦和对疼痛的社会忽视在个体之间存在微弱的相关性。我们的结果将不耐烦和自私之间的联系扩展到厌恶领域。