Preferences for altruism are important in prosocial human behaviour. Studies have documented some differences in social discounting between cultures based on group-level comparisons. It is not clear however how cultural values such as individualism and collectivism are associated with social discounting at the individual-level. The research reported in this paper is based on an incentivized social discounting experiment conducted with 133 laboratory subjects in South Africa, using the standard social discounting task (SDT) and the 14-item reduced-form IND-COL scale. The analysis explores the associations between preferences for altruism and the Individualism and Collectivism (IC) dichotomy and, more specifically, with the Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism (HVIC) schema. The study finds only horizontal collectivism to be associated with greater preferences for altruism. Global shifts toward greater individualism therefore need not threaten the realisation of the benefits of altruism.

利他主义的偏好在亲社会的人类行为中很重要。研究表明，基于群体水平的比较，不同文化之间的社会折价存在一些差异。但是，尚不清楚诸如个人主义和集体主义之类的文化价值观如何与个人层面的社会折衷联系在一起。本文报道的研究基于激励性社会折扣实验，该实验使用标准的社会折扣任务（SDT）和14项简化形式的IND-COL量表，对南非的133名实验室对象进行了研究。该分析探讨了利他主义偏好与个人主义和集体主义（IC）二分法之间的关联，更具体地说，是与水平和垂直个人主义和集体主义（HVIC）模式之间的关联。研究发现，只有横向集体主义与对利他主义的更大偏好相关。因此，全球向更大的个人主义的转变不必威胁利他主义的收益的实现。