Discounting of Shared Rewards in Pigeons

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Tetsuo Yamaguchi
Daisuke Saeki
Kenichiro Taniguchi
Masato Ito

Abstract

Pigeons chose between shared (communal) and unshared patches. In the shared patch, the pigeon would share 14 food pellets with zero to seven other pigeons.  In the unshared patch, the pigeon had access to food pellets by itself, in an amount that depended on the given trial. The number of food pellets in the unshared patch was increased or decreased depending on the pigeon’s choices, and the indifference point (the subjective value of the shared reward), here the pigeon chose the shared and unshared patches equally often, was reached. The subjective value of the shared rewards decreased systematically as the number of pigeons sharing the rewards increased. The discounting of the shared rewards was well- described using both hyperbolic and exponential functions. The results suggest that food sharing is a discounting factor, and the mathematical function that describes the social discounting of hypothetical monetary rewards in humans described social discounting in pigeons receiving real rewards.

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How to Cite
Yamaguchi, T., Saeki, D., Taniguchi, K., & Ito, M. (2019). Discounting of Shared Rewards in Pigeons. Mexican Journal of Behavior Analysis, 45(2). https://doi.org/10.5514/rmac.v45.i2.75577