Keidel Kristof, Rramani Qëndresa, Weber Bernd, Murawski Carsten, Ettinger Ulrich
Department of Psychology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany.
Department of Finance, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 16;12:643670. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.643670. eCollection 2021.
Intertemporal choice involves deciding between smaller, sooner and larger, later rewards. People tend to prefer smaller rewards that are available earlier to larger rewards available later, a phenomenon referred to as temporal or delay discounting. Despite its ubiquity in human and non-human animals, temporal discounting is subject to considerable individual differences. Here, we provide a critical narrative review of this literature and make suggestions for future work. We conclude that temporal discounting is associated with key socio-economic and health-related variables. Regarding personality, large-scale studies have found steeper temporal discounting to be associated with higher levels of self-reported impulsivity and extraversion; however, effect sizes are small. Temporal discounting correlates negatively with future-oriented cognitive styles and inhibitory control, again with small effect sizes. There are consistent associations between steeper temporal discounting and lower intelligence, with effect sizes exceeding those of personality or cognitive variables, although socio-demographic moderator variables may play a role. Neuroimaging evidence of brain structural and functional correlates is not yet consistent, neither with regard to areas nor directions of effects. Finally, following early candidate gene studies, recent Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) approaches have revealed the molecular genetic architecture of temporal discounting to be more complex than initially thought. Overall, the study of individual differences in temporal discounting is a maturing field that has produced some replicable findings. Effect sizes are small-to-medium, necessitating future hypothesis-driven work that prioritizes large samples with adequate power calculations. More research is also needed regarding the neural origins of individual differences in temporal discounting as well as the mediating neural mechanisms of associations of temporal discounting with personality and cognitive variables.
跨期选择涉及在较小的即时奖励和较大的延迟奖励之间做出决定。人们往往更喜欢较早可得的较小奖励，而不是较晚可得的较大奖励，这种现象被称为时间折扣或延迟折扣。尽管时间折扣在人类和非人类动物中普遍存在，但它存在相当大的个体差异。在这里，我们对这一文献进行了批判性的叙述性综述，并对未来的研究工作提出了建议。我们得出结论，时间折扣与关键的社会经济和健康相关变量有关。关于人格，大规模研究发现，时间折扣越陡峭，与自我报告的冲动性和外向性水平越高相关；然而，效应量较小。时间折扣与面向未来的认知风格和抑制控制呈负相关，效应量同样较小。时间折扣越陡峭与智力越低之间存在一致的关联，效应量超过人格或认知变量，尽管社会人口统计学调节变量可能起作用。关于大脑结构和功能相关性的神经影像学证据在涉及的脑区和效应方向上都还不一致。最后，在早期的候选基因研究之后，最近的全基因组关联研究（GWAS）方法揭示了时间折扣的分子遗传结构比最初认为的更为复杂。总体而言，时间折扣个体差异的研究是一个正在成熟的领域，已经产生了一些可重复的发现。效应量为小到中等，这使得未来需要进行假设驱动的工作，优先选择有足够功效计算的大样本。还需要更多关于时间折扣个体差异的神经起源以及时间折扣与人格和认知变量关联的中介神经机制的研究。
