Decision making
Who waits for bigger rewards, and do discounting scores agree?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Four different ways of scoring impatience for money all agreed closely, and people who chose to wait tended to have higher intelligence, better executive function and a stronger focus on the future.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Single-session individual-differences study: a staircase task of hypothetical now-vs-later money choices (delays from 1 month to 25 years; $100 and $10,000 amounts), plus intelligence, executive-function tests and questionnaires, analysed with repeated-measures ANOVA, curve fitting, correlations and hierarchical regression.
- N
- N=99 · 99 undergraduate students tested individually.
- Population
- Undergraduate students at a Canadian university, aged 18 to 30.
- Outcome
- Temporal discounting scored four ways (k-value, area under the curve, indifference point, interest-rate total score), choice reaction times, and correlations with IQ, an executive-function composite, Need for Cognition, Consideration of Future Consequences and a drug/gambling problem composite.
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Key findings
People discounted more as delays lengthened and less for the larger reward, and a hyperbolic curve fit the choices better than an exponential one (for example, 79.50% vs 73.48% of variance at $100). Decisions took longer at the indifference point, where preference switched from now to later. All four scores were strongly intercorrelated, and choosing to wait was linked to higher intelligence, better executive function and more Consideration of Future Consequences; in a regression, future-consequences thinking explained variance beyond intelligence and executive function. Links with drug, alcohol and gambling problems were weak, with only the indifference point reaching significance.
Methodology
University students made a series of hypothetical choices between a smaller amount of money now and a fixed larger amount later, across delays from 1 month to 25 years and for two reward sizes ($100 and $10,000). The authors scored these choices four ways, including a new 'interest rate' score that only counts items where waiting clearly pays off (at least a 40% annual return). Students also completed IQ subtests, Stroop, Trail Making and a serial-addition working-memory task, two thinking-disposition scales, and questions about gambling, alcohol and drug problems.
Limitations
All choices were hypothetical, so the study cannot show how people would behave with real money. The sample was a modest group of university students with few gambling or substance problems, which limits conclusions about clinical or real-world risk behaviour, and the authors call for larger samples. The data are correlational, so they do not show that intelligence or future orientation causes patience, and three of the four discounting scores were badly skewed, limiting which statistics could be used.
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