The Study On The Effects Of Delay Discounting

Delay discounting refers to a psychological phenomenon that the current subjectivevalue of a future reward decreases as the delay. Studies have shown that delay discounting isinfluenced by many effects, mainly including sign effect, magnitude effect, direction effectand domain effect. Sign effect means the individual’s delay discounting rate differs due to gainsituation or loss situation, which is higher in gain situation than in loss situation. Magnitudeeffect means the individual’s delay discounting rate differs due to the number of results, whichof small number is higher than large number. Direction effect means the delay discounting rateof defer is higher than expedite in getting results. Domain effect means the individual’s delaydiscounting rate differs due to different things you choose, which shows domain independent.This study selected college students as the research participants and designed threeexperiments. Besides, titration choice and match method were chose as the experimentalparadigms, delay discounting rate k was used as delay discounting measures. On the basis ofpast research, we explored the influence of diverse delay discounting effects on intertemporalchoice and studied sign effect, magnitude effect, direction effect and domain effect of delaydiscounting. The results are as follows:(1)The individual’s delay discounting rate is higher in gain situation than in loss situation,which means sign effect exists in delay discounting.(2)In gain situation, the delay discounting rate of large number is significantly lower thansmall number, which means magnitude effect exists in gain delay discounting. In loss situation,there is no obvious difference between delay discounting rate of large number and smallnumber, which means magnitude effect doesn’t exist in loss delay discounting.(3) In gain situation, the delay discounting rate of defer is significantly higher thanexpedite, which means direction effect exists in gain delay discounting. In loss situation, thedelay discounting rate of defer is significantly lower than expedite, which means directioneffect doesn’t exist in loss delay discounting.(4) In both gain and loss situation, domain effect exists in delay discounting. The delaydiscounting rate size of different domains in turn is health, time and money.