The Effects Of Cognitive Ability On Intertemporal Choice

Intertemporal choices are decisions that involve tradeoff among gains and losses occurring at different time. People with different cognitive ability are different in a variety of important and unimportant ways. Despite the fact that former researches have ever described its influence on judgment and decision making, very few, however, have attempted to understand the relationship between cognitive ability and intertemporal choice. On one hand, the existing study of this field focuses merely on gain situation. There have been few studies which focus on loss situation. On the other hand, previous researches of this field often use the choice model as elicitation modes, and the match model have seldom been applied. However, a growing body of evidence has suggested that people in choice model often give higher value to the reward money than those in match model does. In addition, previous researches of this field often focus on fictitious situation. There have been few studies which focus on real situation.Therefore, we want to know whether the effects of cognitive ability on intertemporal choice in gain and loss situations exist no matter what elicitation modes and time descriptions respondents face. Besides the virtual situation, we have also studied the real situation.This study is divided into three parts. The first part investigates the relationship between Cognitive Reflection Test(CRT) and other measures of cognitive ability or cognitive style, including the Need For Cognitive scale and self-reported college entrance examination scores. The second part synthetically considers the effects of cognitive ability on intertemporal choice under virtual situation through three experiments considering the influence of the elicitation modes and time descriptions. The part three studies the effects of cognitive ability on intertemporal choice under the real situation based on the part two.The results of this study were as follows:(1) CRT was significantly and positively correlated with other measures of cognitive ability or cognitive style, including the Need For Cognitive scale and self-reported college entrance examination scores.(2) Men scored significantly higher than women on the CRT.(3) In gain situation, people with low cognitive abilities had higher delay discounting and were more patient than people with low cognitive abilities. In loss situation, there were no significant differences in delay discounting rates between high and low cognitive groups no matter what the time description was.(4)Individual’s intertemporal choice preference had differences if the elicitation modes changed. In match mode and gain situation, there were significant differences in delay discounting rates between high and low cognitive groups. People with low cognitive abilities had higher delay discounting and were more patient than people with high cognitive abilities. But in choice mode and gain situation, there were no significant differences in delay discounting rates between high and low cognitive groups.(5) In real situation, people with low cognitive abilities tended to opt for immediate rewards, but people with high cognitive abilities tended to opt for a larger, but delayed, reward.