Does Power Reduce Temporal Discounting? Commentary on Joshi and Fast (2013)

Abstract

Devaluing future outcomes, known as temporal discounting (Frederick, Loewenstein, & O'Donoghue, 2002), hinders one's ability to act in line with long-term over short-term interests. It is associated with maladaptive behaviors such as smoking (Kirby, Petry, & Bickel, 1999), drug use (Harrison, Lau, & Rutström, 2010), and not saving for retirement (Gubler & Pierce, 2014). Because temporal discounting may affect a variety of behaviors, ranging from exercising to energy consumption (Urminsky & Zauberman, 2015), understanding the factors that influence temporal discounting is critical for researchers in psychology, economics, business, and public policy. Joshi and Fast (2013) provided evidence that increased social power (i.e., control over valued resources; Magee & Galinsky, 2008) reduces temporal discounting. This finding has important applied, theoretical, and empirical implications. First, it implies the potential to mitigate temporal discounting by giving individuals power. Psychological and health-science researchers have thus recently advocated for empowerment as an intervention to improve balancing of longterm and short-term interests in decision making (Gubler & Pierce, 2014;Patton et al., 2016;Urminsky & Zauberman, 2015).Second, this finding informs the theoretical debate on how power affects self-control. Temporal discounting may be thought of as a self-control conflict between having a smaller reward sooner versus having a larger reward later (Frederick et al., 2002;Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989). The approach-inhibition theory of power (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003) posits that high power activates the behavioral approach system, which increases impulsivity and sensitivity to rewards. Therefore, high-power individuals, compared with lowpower individuals, should be more likely to prefer earlier to delayed rewards, and thus show more temporal discounting. In contrast, the social distance theory of power (Magee & Smith, 2013) predicts the reverse, that high-power individuals should show less temporal discounting than low-power individuals. According to the social distance theory, because of their greater independence, high-power individuals feel more psychologically distant from low-power individuals than vice versa. Increased psychological distance has been shown to decrease temporal discounting (e.g., Pronin, Olivola, & Kennedy, 2008), in part by leading individuals to construe situations more abstractly (Trope & Liberman, 2010), which highlights the value of the delayed reward (e.g., Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006).Third, this finding could further current understanding of the self-reinforcing nature of power (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). If having power decreases temporal discounting, such heightened self-control on the part of the powerful may help maintain existing power hierarchies. In a United Nations Development Programme report on poverty reduction, Sheehy-Skeffington and Haushofer (2014) extrapolated from Joshi and Fast's (2013) finding to suggest that poverty harms one's chan...

Social and Personal Power: A Closer Examination

“…However, that study does not use a recall-based power manipulation, but instead uses power posing, which is quite different (Ranehil, Dreber, Johannesson, Leiberg, Sul, & Weber, 2015). 2 Second, M&L cite research by Zhang and Smith (2018), to further support the argument that recall-based manipulations are unreliable. However, these authors actually argue in favor of the effectiveness of the recall-based power manipulation 3 .…”

“…3 Zhang and Smith (2018) report an unsuccessful replication of Joshi and Fast (2013) and conclude that although the recall manipulation does reliably induce a sense of power, it does not reliably affect the specific effect postulated by Joshi and Fast.…”

Behavioral trainings and manipulations to reduce delay discounting: A systematic review

“…This is especially relevant as some of the “effective” trainings and manipulations in this systematic review have failed to replicate in more recent studies. For example, Zhang and Smith (2018) did not find an effect of power on DD in two preregistered, close-replication studies of Joshi and Fast’s study in 2013; Sweeney et al (2018) failed to replicate the effects of a working memory training on DD in adolescents with cannabis use disorders; and Kable et al (2017) showed that cognitive training (including working memory training) was unable to decrease DD in healthy controls. We recommend adopting a basic set of principles and methods based on transparency and replicability guidelines (Miguel et al, 2014; Simmons et al, 2011) which would upgrade the quality of studies in general and make it easier to perform replication studies and compare across studies.…”

Regulatory Scope and Its Mental and Social Supports

“…K. Smith, Wigboldus, & Dijksterhuis, 2008; Wakslak, Smith, & Han, 2014; Wiesenfeld, Reyt, Brockner, & Trope, 2017). More pertinently, some initial research suggests that one’s hierarchical position may modulate regulatory scope: Joshi and Fast (2013) reported that people assigned to high-power versus low-power roles were more likely to prioritize larger, later rewards over smaller immediate rewards (see Zhang & Smith, 2018). Similar dynamics may characterize leaders versus followers.…”