“Cross-Modality Matching of Money Against Other Continua”, 1974 (; similar):
Cross-modality matching of hypothetical increments of money against loudness recover the previously proposed exponent of the utility function for money within a few percent. Similar cross-modality matching experiments for decrements give a disutility exponent of 0.59, larger than the utility exponent for increments. This disutility exponent was checked by an additional cross-modality matching experiment against the disutility of drinking various concentrations of a bitter solution. The parameter estimated in this fashion was 0.63.
Three experiments were conducted in which monetary increments and decrements were matched to either the loudness of a tone or the bitterness of various concentrations of sucrose octaacetate. An additional experiment involving ratio estimates of monetary loss is also reported. Results confirm that the utility function for both monetary increments and decrements is a power function with exponents less than one. The data further suggest that the exponent of the disutility function is larger than that of the utility function, ie. the rate of change of ‘unhappiness’ caused by monetary losses is greater than the comparable rate of ‘happiness’ produced by monetary gains.