According to the positive time-discounting assumption of intertemporal
decision-making, people prefer to undergo negative events in the future
rather than in the present. However, negative discounting has been
identified in the intertemporal choice and loss domains, which refers to
people’s preference to experience negative events earlier rather than later.
Studies have validated and supported the "anticipated dread" as an
explanation for negative discounting. This study again explored the effect
of anticipated dread on intertemporal choice using content analysis; that
is, having participants identify anticipated dread among reasons for
negative discounting. This study also validated the effect of anticipated
dread on negative discounting by manipulating anticipated dread. This study
adds empirical and direct evidence for the role of anticipated dread in
negative discounting.
Intertemporal choices involve tradeoffs between outcomes that occur at different times. Most of the research has used pure gains tasks and the discount rates yielding from those tasks to explain and predict real-world behaviors and consequences. However, real decisions are often more complex and involve mixed outcomes (e.g., sooner-gain and later-loss or sooner-loss and later-gain). No study has used mixed gain-loss intertemporal tradeoff tasks to explain and predict real-world behaviors and consequences, and studies involving such tasks are also scarce. Considering that tasks involving a combination of gains and losses may yield different discount rates and that existing pure gains tasks do not explain or predict real-world outcomes well, this study conducted two experiments to compare the discount rates of mixed gain-loss intertemporal tradeoffs with those of pure gains or pure losses (Experiment 1) and to examine whether these tasks predicted different real-world behaviors and consequences (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 suggests that the discount rate ordering of the four tasks was, from highest to lowest, pure gains, sooner-loss and later-gain, pure losses, and sooner-gain and later-loss. Experiment 2 indicates that the evidence supporting the claim that the discount rates of the four tasks were related to different real-world behaviors and consequences was insufficient.
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