Mental Accounting In Decision Making For Self Versus Others

Mental accounting is a metaphor applied to economic decisions because of its utility in conceptualizing psychological phenomena,such as investment,saving,daily consumption and so on.Mental accounting is a series of psychological operating process which individuals code,classify,anticipate and evaluate on economic behavior.There is no doubt that mental accounting is the most influential finding of judgment and decision making in nearly half a century.But some studies questioned the generality of mental accounting,and thought it is limited.The present study that is one part of those skeptical studies aim to investigate whether the mental accounting effect can be observed when individuals make decisions for others.We hypothesized that the mental accounting effect can be detected when individuals make decisions for themselves;however,it may not be observed when they make decisions for others.We conducted two studies to test this idea.In Study 1,participants were asked to read all of scenario A or B,which presented three modified mental accounting problems(the movie ticket problem,the sneaker and umbrella problem,and the basketball game problem),and make decisions for themselves or others.The results showed that the mental accounting effect appeared only in decisions that participants made for themselves and not in decisions that they made for others.The previous studies have demonstrated that social distance affect individuals' perception to others.In Study 2,therefore,we directly manipulated social distance(close other: friend vs.distant other: stranger)and asked participants to make decisions for different others for three modified problems.The results showed that regardless of whether individuals made decisions for a friend or a stranger,the mental accounting effect was not observed.Taken together,these results question the generality of mental accounting and indicate that it may cease to apply when individuals make decisions for others,and this phenomenon is not modulated by social distance.