Nature Communications (Jul 2018)

Differential temporal salience of earning and saving

  • Kesong Hu,
  • Eve De Rosa,
  • Adam K. Anderson

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05201-9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Economists have observed that many people seem unwilling to save for the future. Here, the authors show that earning and saving are subject to a basic asymmetry in attentional choice, such that cues that are associated with saving are perceived as occurring later than cues associated with earning.