Date and Time
October 29, 2008
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Temporal discounting refers to the phenomenon in which individuals value present rewards relative to future rewards. This phenomenon, in theory, could be related to poor saving behavior over the life span: If someone fails to save enough for retirement, he or she is at least implicitly, valuing the present more than the future. To examine temporal discounting, many laboratory studies use standard choice procedures where subjects choose between smaller immediate rewards and larger delayed rewards. However, to the best of our knowledge, little research has examined whether these tasks actually map on to real-life savings behavior, particularly over the lifespan. Thus, we created a novel paradigm that taps into savings behavior and tested it on 40 participants whose ages ranged from 22 - 75. We then examined how our novel task, as well as a standard temporal discounting task, relates to actual financial behavior and age. Results and future directions will be discussed.