Delay discounting refers to decision-makers' tendency to value immediately available goods more than identical goods available only after some delay. In violation of standard economic theory, decision-makers frequently exhibit dynamic inconsistency; their preferences change simply due to the passage of time. The standard explanation for this behavior has appealed to the nature of decision-maker...

The present study with college students examined the effect of amount on the discounting of probabilistic monetary rewards. A hyperboloid function accurately described the discounting of hypothetical rewards ranging in amount from $20 to $10,000,000. The degree of discounting increased continuously with amount of probabilistic reward. This effect of amount was not due to changes in the rate par...

Delay discounting, as a behavioral measure of impulsive choice, is strongly related to substance abuse and other risky behaviors. Therefore, effective techniques that alter delay discounting are of great interest. We explored the ability of a semester long financial education course to change delay discounting. Participants were recruited from a financial education course (n = 237) and an abnor...

This article offers a conceptual framework for separating the distinct theoretical concepts that are often confounded in discussions of discounting. Two distinctions are emphasized: (a) the difference between discounting a future outcome because it confers less utility and discounting future utility per se, and (b) the differences between discounting one’s own future utility and discounting the...

Discounting, the tendency to devalue an outcome as a function of its delay or probability, is emerging as a fundamental process that underlies a broad range of impulsivity-related behaviors. Recent research suggests that people discount the value of sexual outcomes and individual differences in rate of discounting of sexual outcomes may represent an important behavioral process that underlies s...

The present study explored the delay discounting of future and past monetary rewards by pathological gamblers. Using a multiple baseline design, following repeated exposure to choices between smaller immediate and larger delayed consequences, participants completed a relational responding task that attempted to alter the psychological functions of irrelevant stimuli and to affect subsequent del...

A considerable body of evidence indicates that consideration of the future and past are related. Future discounting studies indicate that cigarette smokers discount future outcomes more than non-smokers. The purpose of the present study was to determine if a similar profile of results could be obtained with a novel procedure evaluating the discounting of past outcomes, providing further support...

Delay discounting refers to a decline in the value of a reward when it is delayed relative to when it is immediately available. Delay discounting tasks are used to identify indifference points, which reflect equal preference for two dichotomous reward alternatives differing in both delay and magnitude. Indifference points are key to assessing the shape of a delay-discounting gradient because th...

Time discounting is the phenomenon that a desired result in the future is perceived as less valuable than the same result now. Economic theories can take this psychological fact into account in several ways. In the economic literature the most widely used type of additive time discounting is exponential discounting. In exponential discounting, the fall of valuation depends by a constant factor ...

Discounting is a phenomenon in causal reasoning in which the presence of one cause casts doubt on another. We provide a survey of the descriptive and formal models that attempt to explain the discounting process and summarize what current models do not account for and where room for improvement exists. We propose a levels-of-analysis framework organized around 2 types of models of causal discou...