The Influence Of Emotional Experience On Temporal Discounting In The Process Of Imagining Waiting

Temporal discounting is a psychological phenomenon defined as the individual’s subjective value estimation decreases with the time going.Because there may be uncertainty and potential risks in the process of waiting for a delayed reward,so temporal discounting has the possibility that delayed rewards can not be obtained as expected.Therefore,this study explores influences of emotional experience on temporal discounting during imagining waiting to get delayed rewards from the potential possibility that can not obtain delayed rewards in time.An emotion evoked manner is used,that can evoke different emotional experience to the subject via imagining a series of events may happened during the process of waiting to obtain delayed rewards.Meanwhile,the frequency of events imagined in the process is also considered,we study influences of frequency that contains high level and low level on temporal discounting.Finally,this study considers age characteristics as well.From the experiments from children in 9～11 and adults in 18～23,conclusions are as follows:(1)During imagining waiting to obtain delayed rewards,the percentage of positive subject to choose immediate reward is significantly lower than neutral group,however there is no obviously difference between negative and neutral group.It is also clear that the positive emotional experience of children in 9～11 and adults in 18～23 are more likely to choose to obtain delayed rewards,the negative emotional experience of children in 9～11 and adults in 18～23 have no influence on their temporal discounting.(2)There is a significantly influence of frequency of positive events on the temporal discounting.The higher the frequency of positive events happened,the more children in 9～11 and adults in 18～23 tend to choose delayed rewards.(3)Considering the influence of emotional experience and frequency of events during imagining waiting to obtain delayed rewards on the temporal discounting,there is no significant difference between children in 9～11 and adults in 18～23.So it exists consistency between the two age group.