Outcome editing refers to a set of mental rules that people apply when deciding whether to evaluate multiple outcomes jointly or separately, which subsequently affects choice. In a large-scale online survey (n = 2062) we investigate whether individuals use the same outcome editing rules for financial outcomes (e.g., a lottery win) and social outcomes (e.g., a party with friends). We also test the role of numeric ability in explaining outcome editing. Our results show that people’s preferences for combining or separating events depend on whether those events are in the financial or the social domain. Specifically, individuals were more likely to segregate social outcomes than monetary outcomes, except for when all outcomes were negative. Moreover, numeric ability was associated with preferences for outcome editing in the financial domain but not in the social domain. Our findings extend the understanding of the arithmetic operations underlying outcome editing and suggest that people rely more on calculations when making choices involving multiple financial outcomes and more on feelings when making choices involving social outcomes.

结果编辑是指人们在决定是联合还是单独评估多个结果时应用的一组心理规则，这些规则随后会影响选择。在一项大规模在线调查 (n = 2062) 中，我们调查个人是否对财务结果（例如，中奖）和社会结果（例如，与朋友聚会）使用相同的结果编辑规则。我们还测试了数字能力在解释结果编辑中的作用。我们的结果表明，人们对组合或分离事件的偏好取决于这些事件是在金融领域还是社会领域。具体而言，除了所有结果都是负面的情况外，个人比货币结果更有可能隔离社会结果。而且，数字能力与金融领域的结果编辑偏好相关，但与社会领域无关。我们的研究结果扩展了对结果编辑背后的算术运算的理解，并表明人们在做出涉及多个财务结果的选择时更多地依赖计算，而在做出涉及社会结果的选择时更多地依赖于感受。