ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Science
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Future Thinking Processes in Intertemporal Choice and Delay DiscountingView all articles
Perceived temporal distortions may explain the effect of precarity on intertemporal choices
Provisionally accepted
- Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India
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Existing research on how environmental volatility affect preferences suggests that preference for delayed rewards reduces in the presence of adverse shocks. Researchers typically use reward discounting frameworks to explain these shifts in temporal preferences as shifts in discount rates. In this manuscript, we reinterpret these preference shifts as changes in perceived time duration. Using data from multiple studies, we found that decreases in choice probability for delayed rewards correspond to increases in perceived delay duration, while keeping discount rates constant. Our empirical study also showed that individuals who experienced extension of perceived time during volatility preferred short-term plans more. Based on these findings, we suggest the necessity of considering perceived temporal distortions to understand preference shifts when one encounters environmental volatility.
Keywords: inter-temporal choices, Time preference, delay discounting, unpredictability, Subjective time, Time distortions
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 13 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mitra and Srivastava. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Arjun Mitra, arjunmitra2010@gmail.com
Nisheeth Srivastava, nsrivast@iitk.ac.in
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