The effects of the framing of time on delay discounting

DeHart, William Brady; Odum, Amy L.

doi:10.1002/jeab.125

Cited by 69 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 73 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…We did not find any overall effect of our DATE/DAYS manipulation on the emotional arousal response, nor did we replicate the date/delay effect on choice that was shown in previous studies (Read et al, 2004; LeBoeuf, 2006; DeHart & Odum, 2015). One possibility is that the delays that were used in the current study were shorter than some of the delays used in the previous studies, and the range of delays we used was smaller.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 64%

Emotional arousal predicts intertemporal choice.

Lempert

Johnson

Phelps

2016

Emotion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

People generally prefer immediate rewards to rewards received after a delay, often even when the delayed reward is larger. This phenomenon is known as temporal discounting. It has been suggested that preferences for immediate rewards may be due to their being more concrete than delayed rewards. This concreteness may evoke an enhanced emotional response. Indeed, manipulating the representation of a future reward to make it more concrete has been shown to heighten the reward’s subjective emotional intensity, making people more likely to choose it. Here we use an objective measure of arousal – pupil dilation – to investigate if emotional arousal mediates the influence of delayed reward concreteness on choice. We recorded pupil dilation responses while participants made choices between immediate and delayed rewards. We manipulated concreteness through time interval framing: delayed rewards were presented either with the date on which they would be received (e.g., “$30, May 3”; DATE condition, more concrete) or in terms of delay to receipt (e.g., “$30, 7 days; DAYS condition, less concrete). Contrary to prior work, participants were not overall more patient in the DATE condition. However, there was individual variability in response to time framing, and this variability was predicted by differences in pupil dilation between conditions. Emotional arousal increased as the subjective value of delayed rewards increased, and predicted choice of the delayed reward on each trial. This study advances our understanding of the role of emotion in temporal discounting.

show abstract

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 64%

Emotional arousal predicts intertemporal choice.

Lempert

Johnson

Phelps

2016

Emotion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Individuals were also more likely to perceive an event as occurring sooner when the date was ‘like’ the current date (e.g., in the same year, “December 31 st ”) rather than unlike the current date (e.g., after the same amount of time but in the next year, “January 1 st ” [46]). Describing the future reward as occurring on a date (“May 1 st ”) instead of after an interval of time (“180 days”) leads to more patient choice, perhaps by making the delay to the event seem smaller [47–49]. The date/delay effect may not hold for shorter delays, however [48], because people tend to use interval descriptors for shorter delays; using dates when the reward is in the near future might actually make it seem more distant.…”

Section: Framing Effects On Intertemporal Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

The Malleability of Intertemporal Choice

Lempert

Phelps

2016

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

184

158

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Intertemporal choices are ubiquitous: people often have to choose between outcomes realized at different times. Although it is generally believed that people have stable tendencies toward being impulsive or patient, an emerging body of evidence indicates that intertemporal choice is malleable and can be profoundly influenced by context. How the choice is framed, or the state of the decision-maker at the time of choice, can induce a shift in preference. Framing effects are underpinned by: allocation of attention to choice attributes, reference-dependence and time construal. Incidental affective states and prospection also influence intertemporal choice. We advocate that intertemporal choice models account for these context effects, and encourage the use of this knowledge to nudge people toward making more advantageous choices.

show abstract

“…If similar underlying processes drive monetary delay discounting and air quality delay discounting, targeting the same underlying processes may help reduce delay discounting on a global scale (see Odum, 2011a, b for discussion). Therefore, reductions in monetary delay discounting as have been previously shown through various techniques (e.g., working memory training, Bickel, Yi, Landes, Hill & Baxter, 2011; exposure to nature, Berry, Sweeney, Morath, Odum & Jordan, 2014; Berry, Repke, Nickerson, Conway, Odum & Jordan, 2015; van der Wal, Schade, Krabbendam & Vugt, 2013; future episodic thought, Peters & Büchel, 2010; framing effects, DeHart & Odum, 2015; LeBoeuf, 2006; Radu, Yi, Bickel, Gross & McClure, 2011; acceptance and commitment therapy, Morrison, Madden, Odum, Friedel, & Twohig, 2014; for a review see Koffarnus, Jarmolowicz, Mueller, & Bickel, 2013) may also reduce delay discounting of air quality.…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

The Value of Clean Air: Comparing Discounting of Delayed Air Quality and Money Across Magnitudes

et al. 2017

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The detrimental health effects of exposure to air pollution are well established. Fostering behavioral change concerning air quality may be challenging because the detrimental health effects of exposure to air pollution are delayed. Delay discounting, a measure of impulsive choice, encapsulates this process of choosing between the immediate conveniences of behaviors that increase pollution and the delayed consequences of prolonged exposure to poor air quality. In Experiment 1, participants completed a series of delay-discounting tasks for air quality and money. We found that participants discounted delayed air quality more than money. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether the common finding that large amounts of money are discounted less steeply than small amounts of money generalized to larger and smaller improvements in air quality. Participants discounted larger improvements in air quality less steeply than smaller improvements, indicating that the discounting of air quality shares a similar process as the discounting of money. Our results indicate that the discounting of delayed money is strongly related to the discounting of delayed air quality and that similar mechanisms may be involved in the discounting of these qualitatively different outcomes. These data are also the first to demonstrate the malleability of delay discounting of air quality, and provide important public health implications for decreasing delay discounting of air quality.

show abstract

The effects of the framing of time on delay discounting

Cited by 69 publications

References 73 publications

Emotional arousal predicts intertemporal choice.

Emotional arousal predicts intertemporal choice.

The Malleability of Intertemporal Choice

The Value of Clean Air: Comparing Discounting of Delayed Air Quality and Money Across Magnitudes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About