Within-Culture Sharing Differences: The Role of Economic Strata on Social Discounting in Bogotá, Colombia

Social discounting occurs when a person shares less of a commodity with other individuals as social distance with those other individuals increases. Sharing generally decreases as a function of increasing social distance. Many cross-cultural social discounting studies have shown sharing differences between cultures, but few have measured within-culture variables that may be responsible for differential generosity across social distances. The current study focused on economic strata, or relative economic prosperity, as a within-culture variable that may be meaningfully related to sharing differences for residents of two bordering districts in Bogotá, Colombia—Fontibón and Kennedy. In addition, we tested whether generosity across social distances was significantly related to other prosocial measures that have previously been shown to be correlate with social discounting tasks in North American participants. These measures included identification with all of humanity (IWAH) and impartial beneficence (IB). One hundred four participants from the Fontibón and Kennedy districts completed a social discounting task, three other prosocial measures, and provided demographic information, including their economic stratum. Results showed that Fontibón residents self-reported being in higher economic strata, relative to Kennedy residents. Fontibón residents also shared significantly less during the social discounting task, relative to Kennedy residents. Correlations between social discount rates and IWAH and IB also largely replicated a previous study using North American participants. The impact of economic strata on sharing is discussed in relation to other cross-cultural variables used in social discounting research.