ArticlePloS one2015
Future Discounting in Congo Basin Hunter-Gatherers Declines with Socio-Economic Transitions.
Article in PloS one, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Bitter Taste Perception in BaYaka Hunter-Gatherers.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- The "I" in egalitarianism: Hadza hunter-gatherers averse to inequality primarily when personally unfavorable.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Music production and its role in coalition signaling during foraging contexts in a hunter-gatherer society.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Social ties in the Congo Basin: insights into tropical forest adaptation from BaYaka and their neighbours.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Adaptive function and correlates of anxiety during a pandemic.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2021Article
- Article
- Global WEIRDing: transitions in wild plant knowledge and treatment preferences in Congo hunter-gatherers.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Work time and market integration in the original affluent society.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Development of social learning and play in BaYaka hunter-gatherers of Congo.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) exploit tortoises (Kinixys erosa) via percussive technology.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Competition for Cooperation: variability, benefits and heritability of relational wealth in hunter-gatherers.Scientific reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans have a tendency to discount the future; that is we value small, short-term rewards over larger, long-term rewards. The degree of future discounting, however, changes in response to socio-ecological factors. Here, we study Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers of northern Congo and their farmer neighbours to investigate adaptations in inter-temporal preferences in humans. We argue that in immediate-return systems, where food storage is absent and egalitarianism is enforced through levelling mechanisms, future discounting is an adaptive strategy to prevent wealth accumulation and the emergence of hierarchies. This ensures food sharing and allows for survival in unpredictable environments where there is risk of an energy shortfall. On the other hand, when food storage is made possible by the emergence of agriculture or as seen in some delayed-return hunter-gatherer populations, wealth accumulation, hierarchies and lower discount rates become the adaptive strategy. Therefore, individuals in immediate-return, egalitarian societies will discount the future more than those in non-egalitarian, delayed-return societies. Consistent with the predictions we found that market integration and socio-economic transitions decrease the future discounting in Mbendjele hunter-gatherers. Our measures of socio-economic differences marked this transition in hunter-gatherers living in a logging town. The degree of future-discounting was the same between more market-integrated hunter-gatherers and their farmer neighbours.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.