Deliberating trade-offs with the future

Bulley, Adam; Schacter, Daniel L.

doi:10.1038/s41562-020-0834-9

Cited by 62 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 176 publications

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“…Temporal discounting may stem partly from the inability of decision makers to perfectly simulate future outcomes 26 . In this paper, we develop a theoretical account of prominent regularities in intertemporal choice, based on the idea that mental simulation of the future is noisy but controllable.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rationally inattentive intertemporal choice

Gershman

Bhui

2020

Nat Commun

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Discounting of future rewards is traditionally interpreted as evidence for an intrinsic preference in favor of sooner rewards. However, temporal discounting can also arise from internal uncertainty in value representations of future events, if one assumes that noisy mental simulations of the future are rationally combined with prior beliefs. Here, we further develop this idea by considering how simulation noise may be adaptively modulated by task demands, based on principles of rational inattention. We show how the optimal allocation of mental effort can give rise to the magnitude effect in intertemporal choice. In a re-analysis of two prior data sets, and in another experiment, we reveal several behavioral signatures of this theoretical account, tying choice stochasticity to the magnitude effect. We conclude that some aspects of temporal discounting may result from a cognitively plausible adaptive response to the costs of information processing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rationally inattentive intertemporal choice

Gershman

Bhui

2020

Nat Commun

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“…They thereby reduce the complexity of our experience into simplified models of the world (e.g., about the people we know or about the locations we frequently visit) (8,14). Such models, in turn, foster planning and facilitate adaptive decisions (15)(16)(17).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Value shapes the structure of schematic representations in the medial prefrontal cortex

Paulus

Charest

2020

Preprint

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Adaptive cognition is fostered by knowledge about the structure and value of our environment. Here, we hypothesize that these two kinds of information are inherently intertwined as affective schemas in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Schemas (e.g., of a social network) emerge by extracting commonalities across experiences and can be understood as graphs comprising nodes (e.g., people) and edges (e.g., their relationships). We sampled information about unique real-life environments (i.e., about personally familiar people and places) and probed their neural representations with fMRI. Using representational similarity analysis, we show that the mPFC encodes both, the nodes and the edges of the schema. Critically, the strength of the edges is not only determined by experience and centrality of a given node but also by its affective value. We thus account for the involvement of the mPFC in seemingly disparate functions and suggest that valuation emerges naturally from encoded memory representations.

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“…Episodic simulation allows humans to play out the future and optimize intertemporal choices -a ubiquitous form of decision making in humans (Bulley & Schacter, 2020). The present findings demonstrate that episodic future thinking, regardless of the emotional valence of simulated content, promotes patient choices and that imagining positive events enhances this effect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 50%

“…When episodic future thinking increases the salience of one's shortened time horizon or risk of mortality, delaying gratification becomes a less sensible choice. Related to this idea, the degree of controllability of the negative event may play a role; events with a more malleable outcome may be more effective in promoting farsighted behaviour, as doing so could attenuate the degree to which the future yields harm (see e.g., Bulley & Schacter, 2020 for discussions of this idea). In considering alternative interpretations for these incongruous results, it is possible that other study design features are at play, including sample size, which was notably smaller in Liu et al, (2013) and Zhang et al, (2018) relative to the other studies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagining Emotional Events Benefits Future-Oriented Decisions

Palombo¹,

Madan²

2021

Preprint

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How does imagining future events – whether positive or negative – influence our choices in the present? Prior work has shown the simulation of hypothetical future events, dubbed episodic future thinking, can alter the propensity to engage in delay discounting (the tendency to devalue future rewards) and does so in a valence specific manner. Some research shows that positive episodic future thinking reduces delay discounting, whereas negative future thinking augments it. However, more recent research indicates that both positive and negative episodic future thinking reduce delay discounting, suggesting an effect of episodic future thinking that is independent of valence (Bulley et al., 2019). In the present study, we sought to replicate and extend these latter findings. Here, participants (N = 604) completed an online study. In the baseline task, participants completed a delay discounting task. In the experimental task, they engaged in episodic future thinking before completing a second delay discounting task. Participants were randomly assigned to engage in either positive, neutral, or negative episodic future thinking. In accordance with Bulley et al., we found that episodic future thinking, regardless of valence, reduced delay discounting. Although episodic future thinking shifted decision-making in all conditions, the effect was stronger when participants engaged in positive episodic future thinking, even after accounting for personal relevance and vividness of imagined events. These findings suggest that episodic future thinking may promote future-oriented choices by contextualizing the future, and this effect is further strengthened when the future is tied to positive emotion.

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Deliberating trade-offs with the future

Cited by 62 publications

References 176 publications

Rationally inattentive intertemporal choice

Rationally inattentive intertemporal choice

Value shapes the structure of schematic representations in the medial prefrontal cortex

Imagining Emotional Events Benefits Future-Oriented Decisions

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