← all facts
decision making
You value a small reward today over more tomorrow.
Hyperbolic discounting shows that as a reward becomes more distant, its subjective value drops sharply.
Most people prefer ten dollars today over twenty dollars next month. Even when the math dictates that waiting is superior, the psychological weight of the 'now' consistently overrides the rational benefit of the 'later'.
Your valuation of future events is skewed by the immediacy of the present.
Where this comes from
- Study
- George Ainslie, 1975
- What the check found
- Ainslie's 1975 paper is the seminal work for the hyperbolic discounting model. The $10/$20 example is a standard pedagogical illustration of the principle described in the source.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.