The Relation Between Anxiety And Delay Discounting In College Students

Delay discounting is a kind of mental phenomenon, which the subjective value ofthings declines with the growth of delay time. Previous studies pay more attention tothe demographic factors, while pay less attention to internal factors of the individual,especially the irrational factors. Emotions have specific consistency effect on theinformation processing for individual decision-making. However, the influences ondelay discounting exacted by special emotion are not very clear. As a commonemotion, anxiety has a close relationship with individual delay discounting. Thispaper firstly introduces three different types of anxiety which are trait anxiety, stateanxiety and social anxiety, and then analyze the effects on delay discount caused byspecific emotion. Further, based on the above researches, it explores whether there arean intermediary effect between trait anxiety and delay discount.The research process is divided into two phases, and the interval is six months.The first stage is at the beginning of the new semester, and the method isquestionnaire, including Money Choice Questionnaire, State Anxiety Inventory,Interaction Anxiousness Scale. The second stage is at the end of the semester, and thequestionnaire includes Money Choice Questionnaire, State Anxiety Inventory.Individuals discounting level is measured by discounting rate k. Though analyzing thetwo-stage date, we draw the following conclusion:(1)The relationship between trait anxiety and delay discounting is significant;The relationship between state anxiety and delay discounting is significant.(2)The relationship between social anxiety and delay discounting is notsignificant;(3)The difference of delay discounting between the high grades group and lowgrades group of trait anxiety is significant.(4) The difference of delay discounting between the high grades group and lowgrades group of state anxiety is significant.