| Intertemporal choices refer to those decisions that involve tradeoffs between costs and benefits occurring at different times. How to make an intertemporal choice, however, has been puzzling researchers for many years. Generally speaking, there exist two kinds of strategies in intertemporal choices, including option-based and dimension-based strategy. Underlying the compensatory rule, the option-based strategy refers to the notion that individuals discount future outcome into a present value according to a temporal discounting function, and then choose the lager value at present. On the other hand, dimension-based strategy is based on non-compensatory rule, which refers to the conception that individuals’ process of decision making was based upon time-money tradeoff The debate on which strategy is selected during intertemporal choice has been lasting for some decades. In our study, a logic of double dissociation was adopted to address this long-standing controversy. And then the influence of values and time(money) priming on the strategy selection and decision making were also explored.Three studies were carried on. In the first one, we examined the strategy individuals preferred in two kinds of intertemporal choices, including t1=0 and t1≠0. According to the requisition of double dissociation, the computational difficulty was selected as an independent variable in our study. And we tested whether its influence was similar between the participants trained with strategies and those without strategy training. The results revealed that individuals were inclined to opt the dimension-based strategy in intertemporal choice with higher computational difficulty, while showed no difference of the two kinds of strategies preferences in intertemporal choice with lower computational difficulty. Overall, dimension-based strategy was more preferred in intertemporal choice. Furthermore, we also found individuals’ choices were influenced by trained strategies. The individuals those trained with the option-based strategy preferred to choose SS options (smaller and sooner), while individuals’ preferences between two options of the intertemporal choice were not different when trained with the dimension-based strategy.In the second study, time-orientated and money-orientated individuals were distinguished. Then we explored the strategy preferred by these two kinds of individuals. The results identified that individuals with money-orientation adopted the strategy of trading time for money, while those with time-orientation adopted the strategy of trading money for time. Results also revealed that individuals’personality would influence their choices that individuals with money-orientation preferred LL (larger and later), while the other kind preferred SS.The third study focused on the influence of money and time priming on the selection of strategy by two experiments. But we found there was no influence of priming on the strategy selection. In the intertemporal choice, individuals with money-orientation continue to adopt the strategy of trading time for money, and individuals with time-orientation continue to adopt the strategy of trading money for time. However, the money-priming shortened the time-orientated individual’s decision time in intertemporal choice under the strategy of trading time for money. And the time-priming shortened the money-orientated individuals’decision time in intertemporal choice under the strategy of trading money for time. Analogous to personality, the priming could also influence individuals’choices. The time-priming led individuals to choose SS, and money-priming led them to choose LL.To sum up, we believed that individuals did not stick to adopt one kind of strategy. They would select a compatible strategy in intertemporal choice intelligently. The selection of strategy was based on the tradeoff between the desire to make correct decisions and the desire to minimize the cognitive effort...
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