Abstract
Intertemporal choice is a decision-making dilemma related to outcomes of different entity located at different time points. Economic and psychological literature on this topic showed the phenomen of temporal discounting, i.e., the proclivity to devalue the outcome distant in time on the basis of the time delay necessary to obtain it. The goals of this research are to investigate two different components of intertemporal choice separately, namely time and outcome, in school-age children, and the possible link among such components and the security of attachment style and theory of mind. Ninety one children aged between 6 and 10 years performed two intertemporal choice tasks, first and second order false belief tasks and the Separation Anxiety Task in the Family and School versions. Results showed that the two components of intertemporal choice (waiting tolerance and sensitivity to delayed outcome) are stately interrelated; the quality of the attachment to the family caregiver affects the tolerance to waiting time and first order false belief understanding affects both the components of intertemporal choice.
Highlights
In everyday life people often face the choice to forgo an immediate benefit to get a bigger benefit later
A general model that overall evaluates the impact of gender and age as well as of theory of mind and attachment on the intertemporal choice task (IC) scores is presented
Intertemporal choice was operationalized as waiting tolerance and sensitivity to delayed outcome amount in order to explore the different single components— namely time and entity of the outcome—which are stately interrelated in this type of decision making dilemma
Summary
In everyday life people often face the choice to forgo an immediate benefit to get a bigger benefit later. The interplay between the magnitude of the outcome, the time delay necessary to obtain the bigger outcome, and the subjective perception of these two elements make intertemporal choice a quite complex decision-making process, far away from the model of the rational homo oeconomicus proposed by classical economic theories. Within this framework, decision making tends to reach the maximum possible profit, and the time discount rate is supposed to be constant. The temporal discount rate does not remain the same for any type of good and for any time interval (see Frederick et al, 2002)
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