Researcher ORCID Identifier
0009-0007-9506-9607
Graduation Year
2023
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Economics
Second Department
Linguistics
Reader 1
Sean Masaki Flynn
Reader 2
Galia Bar-Sever
Terms of Use & License Information
Abstract
This study examines differences in temporal discounting tendencies in German and French participants (recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk) through the lens of Neo-Whorfian cognition and the Linguistic Savings Hypothesis (Chen 2013). The LSH proposes that tendencies towards future-oriented economic decisions can be cognitively explained by literal morphosyntactic conventions of one’s native language. Our experiments (sooner-smaller/larger-later choices, endowment-investment task) failed to produce results aligning with the LSH, but uncovered the importance of controlling for risk appetite when specifically investigating intertemporal choice. There are several fruitful improvements to consider for the future, such as stricter sampling, taking richer detail of time preferences, and more robust risk controls.
Recommended Citation
Connelly, Piper, "Neo-Whorfian Examination of Cross-Linguistic Temporal Discounting Behavior" (2023). Scripps Senior Theses. 2029.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/2029
