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Full-Text Articles in Biological Psychology
The Domain Specificity Of Intertemporal Choice In Pinyon Jays, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Bryce Kennedy, Dina Morales, Marianna Burks
The Domain Specificity Of Intertemporal Choice In Pinyon Jays, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Bryce Kennedy, Dina Morales, Marianna Burks
Jeffrey Stevens Publications
When choosing between a piece of cake now versus a slimmer waistline in the future, many of us have difficulty with self-control. Food-caching species, however, regularly hide food for later recovery, sometimes waiting months before retrieving their caches. It remains unclear whether these long-term choices generalize outside of the caching domain. We hypothesized that the ability to save for the future is a general tendency that cuts across different situations. To test this hypothesis, we measured and experimentally manipulated caching to evaluate its relationship with operant measures of self-control in pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus). We found no correlation …
Intertemporal Similarity: Discounting As A Last Resort, Jeffrey R. Stevens
Intertemporal Similarity: Discounting As A Last Resort, Jeffrey R. Stevens
Jeffrey Stevens Publications
Standard models of intertemporal choice assume that individuals discount future payoffs by integrating reward amounts and time delays to generate a discounted value. Alternative models propose that, rather than integrate across them, individuals compare within attributes (amounts and delays) to determine if differences in one attribute outweigh differences in another attribute. For instance, Leland (2002) and Rubinstein (2003) propose models that 1) compare the two reward amounts to determine whether they are similar, 2) compare the similarity of the two time delays, and then 3) make a decision based on these similarity judgments. Here, I tested discounting models against attribute-based …