When people behave impatiently, prioritizing sooner outcomes at the expense of latter ones, is it because they valueachieve their goal sooner, or because they value receiving the benefits sooner? Prior research has often confounded goalgradient (the stronger motivational effect of more proximal goals) and time discounting effects on decision-making. Wefirst establish a preference to invest in the earlier of two equally difficult goals (e.g, a first-goal preference) that could beexplained either by relative goal gradients or by differences in time discounted value. We then experimentally separatethe timing of goal completion and reward receipt. We find separate and disassociated large goal gradient and somewhatsmaller time discounting effects. Our results suggest that goal gradient effects may provide a partial, but substantial,explanation of time discounting and, consequently, can inflate estimated discount rates when not accounted for.

We investigate the effect of manipulating verb tense (e.g, getting $5 vs. will get $5) within a single language on in-tertemporal tradeoffs presented as written stimuli. Verb tense can significantly affect choices between options, with peoplepreferring present-tense options, due to inferences about timing. However, this occurs only in the complete absence ofother timing cues and is eliminated by introducing even vague or non-diagnostic time cues. Gricean maxims of conver-sational implicature say that people maximize relevance and minimize quantity in conversations. Our results suggest thatthat decision makers search across cues for the most relevant information. Tense is deemed to be such a cue in the absenceof other temporal information.

We propose a novel approach to identity-based choice that focuses on peoples’ representations of the cause-effect relationships that exist among features of their self-concepts. More specifically, we propose that people who believe that a specific aspect of identity, such as a social category, is causally central (linked to many other features of the self- concept) are more likely to engage in behaviors consistent with that aspect than those who believe that the same aspect is causally peripheral (linked to fewer other features). Across three studies, we provide evidence for our approach to identity-based choice. We demonstrate that among people who belong to the same social category, those who believe that the associated identity is more causally central are more likely to engage in behaviors consistent with the social category.

While a large literature has studied how people make forecasts, less is known about how lay people process and interpret forecasts presented to them. We contrast two common ways of communicating an uncertain fore- cast, as either a chance (e.g., the probability of winning) or as an expected margin (e.g., the point spread). Across five studies, we find a robust chance-margin discrepan- cy: people tend to treat a chance forecast as conveying greater probability of the higher-likelihood outcome than the statistically equivalent margin forecast

We investigated people’s assessments of their own personal change over time, comparing predicted, actual, and recalled change in personality, values, and performance. On average, participants underestimated the absolute magnitude of their personal change in both prediction and recall. However, people specifically neglected negative future change, resulting in overly optimistic predictions of improvement. In contrast, recall of positive and negative change was relatively more balanced, such that assessments of past improvement were better calibrated on average. Our findings provide insight into how people think about their own identity over time and address disparate theories in the literature regarding predictions of personal stability versus improvement.

The study of how people make judgments and decisions

We investigate the age-old questions of what makes us whowe are and what features of identity, if changed, would makeus a different person. Previous approaches to identity havesuggested that there is a type of feature that is most definingof identity (e.g., autobiographical memories or moralqualities). We propose a new approach to identity thatsuggests that, like concepts in general, more causally centralfeatures are perceived as more defining of the self-concept. Inthree experiments, using both measured and manipulatedcausal centrality, we find that changes to features of identitythat are perceived as more causally central are moredisruptive to both the identity of the self and others.