How People Use Social Information to Find out What to Want in the Paradigmatic Case of Inter-temporal Preferences
Fig 4
The apparent discounting shift ma-mb, considered in the direction of the ‘other’, was regressed against σr and u in the whole sample, N = 738.
This shift is plotted against each variable removing the variance predicted by the other. We focused on variable inter-relationships, thus ignoring y-intercept terms. a. Shift vs. reference dispersion σr. The bigger the likely distance (σr) the smaller the shift. b. Shift vs. preference uncertainty u is also in the direction predicted by Bayesian reasoning. We note that in each case the population consists of a denser core of points but also of penumbrae that slightly dilute the overall fits (coloured lines). Here we follow this more conservative whole-sample regression; see S1 Text for post-hoc quality-controlled analyses.