Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

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.