Impulsive Social Influence Increases Impulsive Choices on a Temporal Discounting Task in Young Adults

Abstract

Adolescents and young adults who affiliate with friends who engage in impulsive behavior are more likely to engage in impulsive behaviors themselves, and those who associate with prosocial (i.e. more prudent, future oriented) peers are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior. However, it is difficult to disentangle the contribution of peer influence vs. peer selection (i.e., whether individuals choose friends with similar traits) when interpreting social behaviors. In this study, we combined a novel social manipulation with a well-validated delay discounting task assessing impulsive behavior to create a social influence delay discounting task, in which participants were exposed to both impulsive (smaller, sooner or SS payment) and non-impulsive (larger, later or LL payment) choices from their peers. Young adults in this sample, n = 51, aged 18–25 had a higher rate of SS choices after exposure to impulsive peer influence than after exposure to non-impulsive peer influence. Interestingly, in highly susceptible individuals, the rate of non-impulsive choices did not increase after exposure to non-impulsive influence. There was a positive correlation between self-reported suggestibility and degree of peer influence on SS choices. These results suggest that, in young adults, SS choices appear to be influenced by the choices of same-aged peers, especially for individuals who are highly susceptible to influence.

Hanging Out With the Right Crowd: Peer Influence on Risk‐Taking Behavior in Adolescence

“…Our results suggest that impulsivity alone cannot explain the effects of peer presence on reaction times (also see Krajbich, Bartling, Hare, & Fehr, ). Moreover, these findings are different from the findings from studies that focused on delay discounting (Gilman et al., ; O'Brien et al., ; Weigard et al., ) which did find an increase in impulsivity in the presence of peers; therefore, future studies should examine the role of impulsivity and the facilitating versus hindering effects of peers on reaction times in more detail (for a recent discussion on impulsivity, see Steinberg & Chein, ).…”

“…Recent experimental studies investigating delay discounting showed that the presence of peers increased young adults' (age 18–22 years) preference for immediate rewards over larger delayed rewards (O'Brien et al., ; Weigard et al., ). Another study showed that, after viewing impulsive decisions of age‐matched peers, young adults (age 18–25 years) had a preference for smaller, earlier payments as well (Gilman, Curran, Calderon, Stoeckel, & Evins, ).…”

Neural Correlates of Social Influence Among Cannabis Users

“…Peer influence on eating behavior is well-known; individuals eat more when their peers eat more, and eat less when their peers eat less [13, 14]. Peers can also effect delay discounting rates [15], as well as the willingness to expend effort to obtain rewards [16]. However, though a sizable literature exists on mechanisms of influence in the general population, and research supports the notion that social influence can spur drug use and other risky behaviors, there is a wide gap in neuroscience research focusing on substance using populations, especially cannabis users.…”

Effect of Social Influence on Effort-Allocation for Monetary Rewards

“…This finding has been replicated in experiments manipulating group size, fear, unanimity, ethnicity, status in group, and judgment difficulty (see [ 12 ] for review). Recently we showed that in a delay-discounting task, young adults had a higher rate of impulsive choices after exposure to impulsive peer influence [ 13 ].…”