What the Future Holds and When: A Description–Experience Gap in Intertemporal Choice. (August 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dai, Junyi; Pachur, Thorsten; Pleskac, Timothy J.; Hertwig, Ralph
• Is Part Of: Psychological science. Volume 30:Number 8(2019)
• Page Start: 1218
• Page End: 1233
• Publication Date: 2019-08
• Subjects: intertemporal choice -- description–experience gap -- temporal uncertainty -- rank-dependent discounted-utility model -- hierarchical Bayesian modeling -- open data -- open materials -- preregistered; Psychology -- Periodicals; 150.5
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797619858969
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0956-7976

Abstract

Uncertainty about the waiting time before obtaining an outcome is integral to intertemporal choice. Here, we showed that people express different time preferences depending on how they learn about this temporal uncertainty. In two studies, people chose between pairs of options: one with a single, sure delay and the other involving multiple, probabilistic delays (a lottery). The probability of each delay occurring either was explicitly described ( timing risk ) or could be learned through experiential sampling ( timing uncertainty ; the delay itself was not experienced). When the shorter delay was rare, people preferred the lottery more often when it was described than when it was experienced. When the longer delay was rare, this pattern was reversed. Modeling analyses suggested that underexperiencing rare delays and different patterns of probability weighting contribute to this description–experience gap. Our results challenge traditional models of intertemporal choice with temporal uncertainty as well as the generality of inverse-S-shaped probability weighting in such choice.