title: Impulsive people have a compulsion for immediate gratification-certain or uncertain.
abstract: Impulsivity has been defined as choosing the smaller more immediate reward over a larger more delayed reward. The purpose of this research was to gain a deeper understanding of the mental processes involved in the decision making. We examined participants' rates of delay discounting and probability discounting to determine their correlation with time-probability trade-offs. To establish the time-probability trade-off rate, participants adjusted a risky, immediate payoff to a delayed, certain payoff. In effect, this yielded a probability equivalent of waiting time. We found a strong, positive correlation between delay discount rates and the time-probability trade-offs. This means that impulsive people have a compulsion for immediate gratification, independent of whether the immediate reward is certain or uncertain. Thus, they seem not to be concerned with risk but rather with time.
authors.affiliation: Department of Behavior Analysis, University of Social Sciences and Humanities , Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Wojciech
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Białaszek
authors.affiliation: Department of Economic Psychology, Kozminski University , Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Maciej
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gaik
authors.affiliation: School of Management, Bucknell University , Lewisburg, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Elton
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: McGoun
authors.affiliation: Department of Econophysics, Warsaw University of Life Sciences , Warsaw, Poland ; Department of Economic Psychology, Kozminski University , Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Piotr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zielonka
keywords: delay discounting; impulsivity; magnitude effect; probability discounting; sign effect; time-probability trade-off