People often exhibit biases in probability weighting such as overweighting small probabilities and underweighting large probabilities. Our research examines whether increased social distance would reduce such biases. Participants completed valuation and choice tasks of probabilistic lotteries under conditions with different social distances. The results showed that increased social distance reduced these biases in both hypothetical (Studies 1 and 2) and incentivized (Study 3) settings. This reduction was accompanied by a decrease in emotional intensity and an increase in the attention to probability in the decision-making process (Study 4). Moreover, the bias-buffering effect of social distance was stronger in the gain domain than in the loss domain (Studies 1–4). These results suggest that increasing the social distance from the beneficiaries of the decisions can reduce biases in probability weighting and shed light on the relationship between social distance and the emotional-cognitive process in decision-making.

人们经常在概率权重方面表现出偏差，例如高估小概率和低估大概率。我们的研究考察了增加社交距离是否会减少这种偏见。参与者在不同社交距离的条件下完成概率彩票的估值和选择任务。结果表明，增加的社交距离减少了假设（研究 1 和 2）和激励（研究 3）环境中的这些偏见。这种减少伴随着情绪强度的降低和决策过程中对概率的关注增加（研究 4）。此外，社会距离的偏差缓冲效应在增益域中比在损失域中更强（研究 1-4）。