Traditional experimental paradigms for measuring social preferences often require participants to choose between options that yield different payoffs for themselves and others. This type of decision-making, which focuses on a single dimension, is referred to as a uni-modal. However, many real-world social decisions are more complex and cannot be reduced to simple monetary trade-offs, often involving multiple dimensions, referred to as cross-modal. Thus, whether these lab-based paradigms effectively capture social preferences in real-world settings remains questionable. This study employed the delayed compensation method to compare the differences in social preferences measuring across uni-modal and cross-modal

by comparing compensation amounts and social value orientation scores across 318 participants. The results showed that individuals exhibit lower prosocial tendencies in uni-modal compared to cross-modal. In addition, scores of social value orientation measured by traditional tools were found to correlate with compensation in uni-modal but not in cross-modal. These findings highlight the limited ecological validity of existing tools for measuring social preferences and provide valuable insights for researchers in selecting and developing more appropriate measurement tools in the future.

social preference, social value orientation, uni-modal, cross-modal, delayed compensation method