An "as soon as possible" effect in human intertemporal decision making: behavioral evidence and neural mechanisms.

ABSTRACT: Many decisions involve a trade-off between the quality of an outcome and the time at which that outcome is received. In psychology and behavioral economics, the most widely studied models hypothesize that the values of future gains decline as a roughly hyperbolic function of delay from the present. Recently, it has been proposed that this hyperbolic-like decline in value arises from the interaction of two separate neural systems: one specialized to value immediate rewards and the other specialized to value delayed rewards. Here we report behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging results that are inconsistent with both the standard behavioral models of discounting and the hypothesis that separate neural systems value immediate and delayed rewards. Behaviorally, we find that human

SUBMITTER: Kable JW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2867580 | biostudies-literature | 2010 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature