Goals and temptations. The first, the very substance of life. But, oh, the second, they are everywhere!

Both are desirable in their own ways, and they do not always align. We wouldn’t call them temptations if they did, would we?

In other words, we often need to decide between behaviors leading to short-term immediate rewards (temptations) and behaviors leading to long-term, larger rewards (goals). Take these two simple examples:

• You want to have a beach-ready body for the summer. So, you start working out and controlling your caloric intake. But, oh gosh, that chocolate cake looks so good! Eating it goes against your goals.
• Another one, inspired by the current pandemic. You want to protect others around you, so you wear a mask. But it is uncomfortable, and you suddenly get the urge to scratch your face, a no-no in times of COVID-19. Removing the mask or scratching could be immediately relieving but doing so goes against your goals.

These are examples of a phenomenon that cognitive scientists refer to as “delay discounting.” Delay discounting, essentially, means that the subjective value of a reward diminishes as the delay to receive it increases. In other words, the longer in the future a goal is, the more its subjective value decreases.

Delay discounting and its relationship with health and well-being

The tendency to prefer shorter- or longer-term benefits has implications for health and well-being. It differs between people, much as personality traits differ. People with addiction difficulties or gambling problems, for example, have increased delay discounting because they tend to have shorter-term preferences.

Note, however, that heightened delay discounting does not always lead to negative outcomes. Lower than average delay discounting can also be problematic. It always depends on the context.

When increased delay discounting is a factor that leads to poorer outcomes, finding ways to efficiently decrease it could be a promising intervention approach. If so, what are the best ways to support people to decrease delay discounting in ways that benefit them in concrete ways?

This is the subject that Scholten,  Scheres, de Water, Graf,  Granic, and  Luijten address in their paper published in the Psychonomic Society journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

A systematic review approach

To identify efficient ways to reduce delay discounting, the authors performed a systematic review of almost three decades of research. After a careful selection process, they reviewed almost 100 studies on the subject. The diagram below illustrates the search and selection strategy used by the authors.

Among the 98 selected papers, most reported either training studies or experimental manipulations.

In training studies, researchers offer a training program over one or several sessions and often are interested in clinical populations. Note that the training does not necessarily target delay discounting specifically, but it is one of the dependent variables. About a quarter of these studies found reductions in delay discounting (26%), whereas some found mixed results (16%), and about half of them found either null-effects or unexpected increases (58%). All of the studies that included a secondary behavioral outcome (reductions in the use of substances, for example) found positive effects.

In papers reporting experimental manipulations, a single manipulation is usually used (framing, priming, etc.) and participants tend to be healthy individuals. Most of these studies found the reductions in delay discounting (86%), whereas 13% found null results or unexpected increases, and one study found mixed results (about 1%).

At first sight, it could seem that experimental manipulations are more effective than training approaches. This can seem counterintuitive, as training approaches are usually longer and require more active involvement. Keep in mind, however, that the two types of studies tend to have many differences, such as its participant composition (clinical populations vs. healthy individuals), the timing of testing (experimental manipulation studies tend to test right after the manipulation), and the study design (within-subject designs, more common in experimental studies, are better able to detect effects).

So many options

A lot of different approaches for training and many different experimental manipulations have been investigated over almost thirty years. As a non-exhaustive list of examples, some training programs have been based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, which is a psychotherapeutic approach based on identifying and modifying thought patterns and behavioral responses. Other training programs have focused on improving working memory, a component of executive functioning (about which we have previously written). Yet other training programs have investigated acceptance and mindfulness techniques, which are based on nonjudgmental awareness and focusing attention on the experiences one is exposed to.

The realm of experimental manipulations is even more vast and has revealed that manipulations of social factors (e.g., social comparisons, deciding for oneself vs. a group including oneself), framing effects (how a situation is described), emotional states, construal levels (how concretely a situation is represented) and visualization types (mental representations’ vividness levels), and many other variables can reduce delay discounting.

With so many options to choose from, which ones are more likely to be useful for decreasing delay discounting and ultimately to have a positive impact on health and well-being?

Promising approaches to reducing delay discounting

Scholten and colleagues identified a promising training approach, and a type of experimental manipulation with good potential to develop into interventions.

The most promising training approach, according to the authors, is the use of techniques based on acceptance and mindfulness. As explained earlier, a central tenet of this approach is promoting nonjudgmental acceptance of experiences. Possibly, people with higher delay discounting find the experience of waiting particularly aversive and tend to escape from it by choosing lower quality but more immediate rewards.

If this is the case, accepting the negative feelings associated with experiencing delays could help people go through them and achieve longer-term goals. In people with addiction problems, for example, accepting the negative feelings associated with cravings seems to help to resist them.

Regarding experimental manipulations, the authors note that those that require people to focus their attention in the future and imagine it more vividly are likely to be useful for developing full-fledged interventions.

The premise is that a more vivid representation of the experience of future rewards and a sense of connection with the future self allows people to more easily forego temptations (immediate rewards) for the sake of long-term goals. An example of this could be to vividly picture the experience of a transatlantic trip while enhancing the subjective connection with the future self (i.e., the one that will experience the trip) to persist on a difficult savings goal.

Interestingly, these findings suggest that it can be effective to guide people to focus on the present or the future, as needed. The trick for decreasing delay discounting could be choosing which attributes of the present or future to focus on.

Implications for clinical practice and everyday life

For practitioners, understanding better the role of delay discounting in decision-making and ways to manipulate it could be a valuable tool to help patients, one that has the advantage of potentially being useful across a wide variety of conditions.

For all of us, some basic knowledge on how delay discounting relates to our daily attempts to balance short- and long-term goals provides insight into our everyday decision-making. We can use these clues to support our efforts to achieve long term goals, and, why not, to know when it is okay to indulge in temptation!

Psychonomic Society’s article focused on in this post:

Scholten, H., Scheres, A., de Water, Graf, U., Granic, I. & Luijten. M. (2019). Behavioral trainings and manipulations to reduce delay discounting: A systematic review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 26, 1803–1849. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01629-2