Intertemporal choice reflects value comparison rather than self-control: insights from confidence judgments

Abstract

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 independent 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.

Subjective Time in Dementia: A Critical Review

“…For example, the greater variability in time perception described earlier across dementia syndromes could be associated not necessarily with steeper delay discounting, but with reduced sensitivity to delay information in making intertemporal decisions—a phenomenon observed recently in both AD and bvFTD [ 168 ]. Similarly, the noise introduced by variability in subjective time representations could manifest in greater internal uncertainty around estimates of prospective value [ 178 ], and therefore less consistency in intertemporal choices (see [ 179 ]). Alterations in value-directed learning in bvFTD might further influence responses to intertemporal choice tasks by compromising the capacity to selectively prioritise high-value options [ 180 ].…”

The effect of incentives on intertemporal choice: Choice, confidence, and eye movements

“…Recently, several studies have attempted to examine the confidence of intertemporal choice. For instance, Bulley et al ( 2021 ) failed to observe that participants' confidence was higher when they chose the LL options, contrary to the assumptions of the self-control account. However, in their experiment, they used hypothetical rewards without incentive, potentially preventing them from finding the evidence supporting their hypothesis.…”

Imagining emotional events benefits future-oriented decisions

“…Such a proposal is consistent with our findings that all episodic future thinking (regardless of emotional valence) shifted participants towards more patient decisions, although vividness of events (potentially a proxy for concreteness) was only associated with this shift in the positive and neutral conditions (also see Peters & Büchel, 2010 ). Although we did not include a group without an episodic future thinking manipulation, other studies have used repeated administrations of a delay discounting task within the same experimental session and demonstrated no change in discounting values ( Bulley et al, 2021 ; Naudé et al, 2018 ; intermixed format). This finding, coupled with observed correlations between the change in discounting following episodic future thinking and phenomenological ratings, make it less likely that participants selected more patient choices in the second iteration of the delay discounting tasks simply due to repeated testing.…”