The Effect Of Background Information And Personality On University Students’ Delay Discounting

Delay discounting refers to a phenomenon that the subjective value of a reward decreases as the time of getting this reward extends. The dual system theory acknowledged that the delay discounting is higher when the “hot” executive function is in charged. In order to investigate when one’s behavior is controlled by the “hot” executive function and how the environmental factors and the personalistic factors affect the university students’ delay discounting conjointly, this research designed two different experiments. In first experiment, no information is offered to the subjects, which was called the “none background information” experiment. In the second experiment, subjects were asked to learn some general knowledge of the future trading, and then imagine they were doing future trading now with experimenter’s instruction, this was called the “having background information” experiment. Subjects were asked to finish the delay discounting task under these two different situations. 128 university students were delivered into two different experiments. The delay discounting task was displayed on a computer using the E-prime software based on the “Monetary Choice Questionaire”. In each experiment there were two subject groups, type A personality group and type B personality group, which was divided by the “Type A Behavior Pattern Scale”. There were 65 subjects in the “no background information” condition including 33 type A students and 32 type B students, and 63 subjects in the “having background information” experiment including 31 type A students and 32 type B students. The results suggests that the delay discounting is significantly different between female and male university students. There is no significant difference between type A and type B university students’ delay discounting in the “none background information” experiment, but the difference is siginificant in the “having background information” experiment. Subjects’ delay discounting in the “having background information” experiment is higher than those in the “none background information” experiment. Experiments and personality has a significant interactive effect on university students’ delay discounting. This research results showed that:(1) The delay discounting of different gender is different, male students is more prefered tochoose immediate rewards than female students.(2) The environmental factors has a effect on university students’ delay discounting,risk and competition make person more preferred to choose immediate rewards.(3) Environmental factor and personality conjointly affect the students’ delay discounting. Under the stressed environment of risk and competition, type A students can make a more reflective choice than type B students, but under the none stressed environment, both type A and type B student can make a better choice.