Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Research on intertemporal choice has suggested that decisionprocesses automatically favor immediate rewards. In thispaper, we use a drift diffusion model to conceptualize andempirically investigate the role of these biases. Our modelpermits automatic biases in the response process, automaticbiases in the evaluation process, as well as differentialweighting for monetary payoffs and time delays. We fit ourmodel to individual-level choice and response time data, andfind that automatic biases are prevalent in intertemporalchoice, but that the type, magnitude, and direction of thesebiases vary greatly across individuals. Our results pose newchallenges for theories of intertemporal choice behavior.