The Plasticity Of Intertemporal Choice

Intertemporal choice involves tradeoffs among costs and benefits occurring at different times(Frederick et al.,2002).In today's society,we can see the existence of intertemporal choice everywhere,from individual's retirement savings to national economic policy making,even the decision of transnational organization.Researches on intertemporal choice not only has very high scientific value,but also can help individuals and organizations make more rational decisions(J Peters & Büchel,2011).In recent years,with the development of psychological mechanism theory and the development of neuroimaging techniques,researchers have done lots of studies to investigate the cognitive neural mechanisms of intertemporal choice.Studies has showed that many people prefer a smaller interest given immediately to a greater interest given in the future.To help individual make better decisions,researchers has investigated the plasticity of intertemporal choice from the aspects of working memory training and Advisor Teller Money Manager.During the process of intertemporal choice,individual will image benefit given immediately or in the future.However,we didn't find research which investigated the relation between episodic future thinking training and plasticity of intertemporal choice.Based on previous researches,we did this present study which combined behavioral experiment with episodic future thinking training.The present study aimed to explore two questions: first,the influence of imagining different valence events on individuals' delay discounting;second,the influence of episodic future thinking training on the plasticity of intertemporal choice.By two related experiments,this study aims to explore the relationship between episodic future thinking and intertemporal choice.From the state perspective,we did study 1.In study 1,we operated the valence factor to explore the influence of imagining different valence events on individuals' delay discounting.The delay discounting rate index is the area under the curve(AUC).The results showed that:(1)compared to baseline condition,when imagined positive events,subjects' AUC significantlyincreased,which means delay discounting rate significantly decreased;(2)compared with baseline condition,when imagined negative events,subjects' AUC significantly decreased,which means delay discounting rate significantly increased;(3)compared with baseline condition,when imagined neutral events,there was no significant change on subjects' delay discounting.These findings showed that the valence of imagined events may influence the change direction of subjects' delay discounting.From the trait perspective,we did study 2.In study 2,we divided participants into training group and control group,and explored the relation between episodic future thinking ability program and the plasticity of intertemporal choice.We found that:(1)after the training,compared with control group,subjects in positive training group had higher episodic future thinking ability and higher emotion score,subjects in negative training group had higher episodic future thinking ability and higher emotion score,subjects in neutral training group had higher episodic future thinking ability,but their emotion score had no remarkable difference;(2)after the training,compared with control group,subjects in positive training group had higher AUC,subjects in negative training group had lower AUC,subjects' AUC in neutral training group had no remarkable difference;(3)in negative training group,participants' ?AUC has a negative correlation trend with episodic future thinking ability measured in posttest;in positive training group,participants' ?AUC has a marginalsignificant positive correlation with episodic future thinking ability measured in posttest.These findings showed that our episodic future training program is effective and the episodic future thinking ability influences the change degree of subjects' delay discounting.In a word,the present study indicated that:(1)the valence of imagined event,together with the episodic future thinking ability,will influence the change of individual's delay discounting;(2)specifically,when imagined future events,the valence of imagined event determined the change direction of subject's delay discounting;second,and the episodic future thinking ability influences the change degree of individual's delay discounting.This study expands the study field of intertemporal choice and has important scientific values for the intervention of the addict's delay discounting.Future research needs to use the neuroimaging techniques,such as f MRI and NIR,to investigate the neural mechanism between episodic future thinking training and the plasticity of intertemporal choice.