Intertemporal choice reflects value comparison rather than self-control: insights from confidence judgements
Open accessAbstract
Intertemporal decision-making has long been assumed to measure self-control, with prominent theories treating choices of smaller, sooner rewards as failed attempts to override immediate temptation. If this view is correct, people should be more confident in their intertemporal decisions when they ‘successfully’ delay gratification than when they do not. In two pre-registered experiments with built-in replication, adult participants (n = 117) made monetary intertemporal choices and rated their confidence in having made the right decisions. Contrary to assumptions of the self-control account, confidence was not higher when participants chose delayed rewards. Rather, participants were more confident in their decisions when possible rewards were further apart in time-discounted subjective value, closer to the present, and larger in magnitude. Demonstrating metacognitive insight, participants were more confident in decisions that better aligned with their separate valuation of possible rewards. Decisions made with less confidence were more prone to changes-of-mind and more susceptible to a patience-enhancing manipulation. Together, our results establish that confidence in intertemporal choice tracks uncertainty in estimating and comparing the value of possible rewards—just as it does in decisions unrelated to self-control. Our findings challenge self-control views and instead cast intertemporal choice as a form of value-based decision-making about future possibilities. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny’.
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The choice set used to measure discount rates was widely adopted and designed to capture a broad range of discount rates.
“We used a widely adopted choice set designed to capture a broad range of discount rates31–37.”
From Temporal discounting predicts procrastination in the real world (2024) · cites this paper as [36]
The Methods (page unavailable) identify the choice set as a standard Monetary Choice Questionnaire and describe choices spanning several reward amounts and delays from 1 to 180 days. This supports its use as an established discounting measure, but the paper does not say the set was designed to capture a broad range of discount rates. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Temporal discounting predicts procrastination in the real world
Zhang, P. Y., & Ma, W. J. (2024) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-024-65110-4 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
- Authors
- Bulley, A., Lempert, K. M., Conwell, C., Irish, M., & Schacter, D. L.
- Affiliations
- The University of Sydney (AU)
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Bulley, Adam
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2022-10-31
- Volume
- 377
- Issue
- 1866
- Pages
- 20210338-20210338
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC9619231
- OpenAlex
- W4307848213
- Cited by
- 33
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 4.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Health and Medical Research Council (APP1162811)
- Australian Research Council (DP180101548, DP210101572, FT160100096)
- National Institute on Aging (F32-AG-054032-02, R01 AG008441)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Keywords
- intertemporal choice, self-control, confidence judgments, metacognition, value comparison, delay discounting, subjective value, patience, change of mind, decision uncertainty, value-based decision making
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Choice Behavior, Forecasting, Humans, Judgment, Motivation, Reward, Delay Discounting
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