2002/03/01 by Matthew W. Johnson, Warren K. Bickel · 5 citations
Decision Sciences · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics #Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1901/jeab.2002.77-129
crossref issued 2002/03/01 · crossref published 2002/03/01 · crossref published-print 2002/03/01 · openalex publication_date 2002/03/01 · crossref created 2006/03/02 · crossref published-online 2013/02/26 · crossref deposited 2023/11/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
A within-subject design, using human participants, compared delay discounting functions for real and hypothetical money rewards. Both real and hypothetical rewards were studied across a range that included 10 to 250. For 5 of the 6 participants, no systematic difference in discount rate was observed in response to real and hypothetical choices, suggesting that hypothetical rewards may often serve as a valid proxy for real rewards in delay discounting research. By measuring discounting at an unprecedented range of real rewards, this study has also systematically replicated the robust finding in human delay discounting research that discount rates decrease with increasing magnitude of reward. A hyperbolic decay model described the data better than an exponential model.