Reducing Delay discounting with Future Episodic Thinking

Intertemporal decision-making is a part of life; people make decisions constantly negotiating immediate gratification and future outcomes and goals (Epstein, Salvy, Carr, Dearing and Bickel, 2010). Delay discounting; the extent, to which a person values an immediate reward over future consequences, is considered an index of impulsivity (Epstein et al, 2003) that is associated with suboptimal health behaviors like alcohol abuse, drug dependency and obesity (Bickel et al, 2010, Epstein et al, 2003). Future episodic thinking has been demonstrated to reduce delay discounting (DD) (Peters and Buchel, 2010). This study investigated the efficacy of this technique in reducing DD when compared to control thinking and imagery task. Participants attended two sessions, in one session, participants were required to generate future events with vivid episodic imagery and associations and then think about these events while completing a DD task. In the other session, participants were required to read an excerpt from a story and generate positive events with vivid imagery and think about these events as they completed a DD task. The DD task required participants to make choices between immediate and delayed rewards. A mixed-design anova revealed participants significantly discounted less in the future oriented sessions (AUC=.704 , p=.043), compared to control sessions (AUC=.683 , p=.043). AUC values closer to 1 indicate less steep discounting. These results suggest that future episodic thinking may be efficacious in improving DD and future research should focus on its use in populations known for higher rates of delay discounting and risky health behaviors.