This is a collaborative proposal with George Loewenstein of Carnegie-Mellon University (SBR-9520891). The PIs propose to investigate the lack of personal consistency in patience across choice situations. The authors hypothesize that traditional economic discounting models are inadequate to explain such inconsistency. Instead the PIs propose that temporarily high discount rates are promoted by situations in which transient factors influence the desirability of choice alternatives. Such factors include drive states and emotions, for example. The following four hypotheses encompass their theory. First, changes in immediate transient factors have a greater impact on behavior than changes in delayed transient factors. Second, our actual response to a transient factor is greater than anticipated. Third, we underestimate the impact of future transient factors on our future behavior. Fourth, people underestimate the impact of transient factors on the behavior of other persons. The authors propose to do four studies, each of which will manipulate a transient factor. The basic paradigm is to offer participants a choice of an inferior option now or a superior one later. The PIs will observe how the choice behavior is influenced by varying the transient motivation for the options.
