The Effect Of Task Framework And Altruistic Personality On Tne Social Discounting For The Elderly

In our daily life,due to the different degrees of relationship,each person will have a definite social distance from peripheral others.The impact of other people’s profits or losses on individuals decreases with the increase of social distance between them,and the willingness of individuals to share resources declines with the increase of social distance between decision makers and recipients.This phenomenon is collectively called social discounting.Although a large number of studies have explored the mechanism of this kind of discounting phenomenon,the subjects are limited to college students,and little is known about the aging trend of social discounting.According to people’s life experience,elderly people seem to be more tolerant and generous.So how does the social discounting phenomenon change with aging trend?In this study,social discounting task is used to measure the degree of social discounting under different conditions,combining with the two aspects of framework and altruistic personality factors.The purpose of this study is to explore the aging mechanism of social discounting by investigating the difference of discounts between middle-aged and elderly groups.The study consists of two experiments.The number of subjects in Experiment 1 is 460 after screening,including 216 in middle-aged group and 244 in elderly group.The experiment uses three-factor mixed design of 2(age: middle age,elderly)*2(task framework: gain,loss)*4(social distance: relatives,friends,new acquaintances,strangers)to explore the impact of task framework and social distance on the social discounting level of middle-aged and elderly groups,and then compare the differences between different age groups to explore the trend of social discounting phenomenon with the growth of age.The experimental results show that:(1)Task framework has a significant impact on the social discounting level of middle-aged and elderly people,that is,the average discounting level of all subjects under the loss-framework is significantly lower than that under the income-framework;(2)The interaction between task framework and social distance influences the social discounting degree of the groups.That is to say,the social discounting degree under the loss-framework is significantly lower than the social discounting degree under the income-framework at the level of social distance of four different relationship objects,andthe difference of the discounting degree under the two task frameworks increases with the increasing social distance of the relationship objects;(3)The interaction of age group,framework and social distance affects the degree of social discounting,that is,in the income-framework,the discounting degree of the elderly group is significantly lower than that of the middle-aged group in terms of "relatives" and "new acquaintances".However,due to the social limitations,the discounting level of the elderly group in terms of "friends" is higher than that of the middle-aged group.Within the framework of loss,the discounting on "relatives" and "strangers" in the elderly group are significantly lower than those in the middle-aged group.It can be concluded that the elderly group has a higher level of generosity than the middle-aged group under different task frameworks and social distances.In experiment 2,a three-factor mixed design of 2(age: middle age,elderly)*2(altruistic level: high and low)*4(social distance: relatives,friends,acquaintances,strangers)is used to investigate the influence of altruistic level and social distance on the social discounting degree of middle and old age groups,and to explore the difference of social discounting degree between middle and old age groups under different altruistic levels.128 subjects(63 middle-aged and 63 elderly)are selected by measuring altruism level.The result shows that:(1)altruism level affects the social discounting level of middle-aged and elderly people.It means that the average social discounting level of all high-level altruists is significantly lower than that of low-level altruists;(2)The interaction between altruistic level and social distance influences the social discounting degree of middle-aged and elderly groups.That is,the social discounting degree of high-altruistic-level subjects is significantly lower than that of low-altruistic-level subjects at the level of social distance of four different relational objects,and the difference between the two levels increases with the increase of social distance.(3)The interaction between age group and altruistic level affects the degree of social discounting.In another word,at high altruistic level,the degree of social discounting in the elderly group is significantly lower than that in the middle-aged group;at low altruistic level,there is no significant difference between the two groups.Based on the social discounting task of predecessors,this study makes an in-depth study of the factors affecting the social discounting of middle-aged and elderly groups,and preliminarily explores the aging trend of social discount phenomenon in the context of Chinese culture.The experimental results obtain some relevant laws of social discount,perfect the exploration of social discounting for middle-aged andelderly groups.It not only plays a positive theoretical guiding role in explaining the social decision-making behavior of different age groups,but also provides a scientific and effective demonstration for eliminating some stereotypes about the stigmatization characteristics of the elderly groups in society.