Topic 6 Flashcards
Principle 2.3
We devalue rewards that have longer delays influenced by our sensitivity to the delay (imp)
Principle 2.4
Procrastination is what happens when one activity has a higher value than another at a current moment
Appliances study
RQ: does temporal discounting influence our purchasing decisions?
M: researchers examined the purchasing decisions of people as they bought air conditioners and fridge units
C:
1. higher initial cost - lower monthly fees - energy efficient
2. lower initial cost - higher monthly fees - less energy efficient
R: despite better long-term savings people are more likely to prefer the cheaper initial cost. People with lower incomes end up spending more money overall
Pigeon Study - postponing work
RQ: how much extra work will pigeons be okay with if they can delay that work to a later time?
M:
1. RED button required MORE work after a 6-second delay - 6 pecks
2. GREEN button required LESS work after a 20-second delay (food now and work in 20 seconds)
Pigeons prefer to press the green button first
The amount of work required for the green button increases until pigeons choose it 50% of the time
R: pigeons will choose to do 6 times more work (30 pecks) if they can delay it by 14 seconds
A: the delay makes the negative cost less impacting
pigeon study 2 - preference reversal
RQ: how do delays influence the reward that pigeons will take?
M: pigeons love food - more food = better
red button gives 2 seconds of food, the green button gives 4 seconds of food
Condition A:
red - 2 sec delay
green - 4 sec delay
Condition B:
red - wait 30s
green - wait 32s
A: When the delays were proportionally shorter a less rational decision is made. Longer delays allowed a more rational decision to be made.
delay and problem solving through the value equation
although intuition is often incorrect.. instant gratification of having “an answer” has higher value than slower more delibrate thinking
impulsiveness and ADHD
people with ADHD make decisions that prioritise instant gratification over long term rewards - sometimes makes bad decisions cause of this
old brain vs younger brain
- children have higher impulsiveness
- even imp between adults and elderly
- dementia and cognitive decline can cause imp to go up
marshmallow test
children are told they can eat marshmallow now or wait and get two, experimenter leaves and children are followed as they grow up to see success in life.
R: higher control kids do better in school
- children trained in relaxation techniques and attention control are able to overcome their temporal discounting
the advantage of impulsiveness
allows for fast responses to unexpected changes in environment
e.g. pigeons food may be eaten if not prioritised or predator may appear
income and impulsiveness
environmental factors are strongly linked to stable income
- IMP may be amplified by environmental factors
- adults have baseline IMP but environment impacts it
- temporal discounting does not lead to long term thriving
procrastination throughout history
- procrastination has been a human problem since the beginning of time
- getting worse in recent years
- 1970s - 4-5% of people struggle with procrastination
- 2012 - 15-20% of people
procrastination and rewards
students give 26 options rank why they may procrastinate on a paper
R: the best description of the types of answers chosen was “aversiveness of task”
- most popular choice was really dislike writing term papers 45%
chronic procrastinators
also known as trait procrastination
- there is a strong and stable correlation between trait procrastination and findings tasks aversive in general
procrastination and pS
links between poor self esteem, self efficacy, and measures of procrastination.
Prone to give up their efforts when theres problems in their performance and are at risk of having behaviours that are self-defeating
