Intertemporal Choice In Past Orientation And Future Orientation

People often need to weigh against the things that occur at different time points and then make decisions. Intertemporal choice is when individuals face smaller sooner reward (SSR) and a larger later rewards (LLR), they will compare the costs and benefits of each time point. Researchers pay more attentions to the area of intertemporal choice and have achieved fruitful results.This study reviews the previous research results of intertemporal choice. Previous studies often use match method or select method to research the influencing factors such as options characters, decision makers’characters and decision-making environment. As well, the researchers study the phenomenon and the internal mechanism of intertemporal choice from the perspective of the mathematical model, psychological theory, evolution theory and brain mechanisms.This study add the past orientation into the previous intertemporal choice, design three experiments to research the past and future orientation intertemporal choice by questionnaires. In the first experiment, we research how people make value decision from the past and the future orientation in a negative event. In the second experiment, we research how people make value decision from the past and the future orientation in a positive event. In the third experiment, we research the influence of temporal orientation, temporal distance and event value on intertemporal choice. From the result, we have some conclusions as below:1) In the negative event, people value the future event more than the past event.2) In the negative event, when the temporal orientation affects the value judgment, negative emotion plays a medium role.3) In the positive event, people value the future event more than the past event.4) In the positive event, when the temporal orientation affects the value judgment, positive emotion plays a medium role. 5) Temporal orientation affects the discounting rate, the future discounting rate is higher than the past discounting rate.6) Temporal distance affects the discounting rate, the discounting rate of near distance is higher than the discounting rate of far distance. In the past orientation, the discounting rate of near distance is the same as that of far distance, however, in the future orientation, the discounting rate of near distance is higher than the discounting rate of far distance.7) Event value affects the discounting rate, the discounting rate of negative event is higher than the discounting rate of positive event. In the past orientation, the discounting rate of negative event is the same as that of positive event, however, in the future orientation, the discounting rate of negative event is higher than the discounting rate of positive event.