| Summary: | People tend to prefer smaller and sooner (SS) rewards over
larger and later (LL) ones even when the latter are much larger. Previous
research have identified several ways to enhance people's patience. Adding to
this literature, the current paper demonstrates that introduction of upfront
losses as well as gains to both SS and LL rewards can decrease people's
impatience. This effect is incompatible with both the normative exponential and
descriptive hyperbolic discounting models, which agree on the additive
assumption and the independence assumption. We also exculde the integration
explanation which assumes subjects integrate upfront money with final rewards
and make a decision with bottom line at the end. We consider several possible
explanations, including the salience hypothesis, which states that introducing
upfront money makes the money dimension more salient than not and thus
increases the attractiveness of LL options.
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