Investigations in spontaneous discounting

Abstract

Oppenheimer's (2004) demonstration that causal discounting (when the presence of one cause casts doubt on the presence of another) can happen spontaneously addressed the standing concern that discounting was an artifact of experimental demands, but these results could have resulted from memory inhibition. The present studies rule out this alternative using the same surname frequency estimation paradigm. In Study 1, individuals discounted surname familiarity even when it could be attributed to semantic meaning; in Study 2, participants under cognitive load discounted less; in Study 3, participants who were promised a prize for accuracy discounted more. All three results conform to a spontaneous causal discounting account better than to the inhibition alternative. © 2009 The Psychonomic Society, Inc.