Temporal Discounting, Emotions and Agency

Abstract

What kind of emotions could be the causes of temporal discounting and its hyperboloid curve? Not the too general category of “visceral” anticipatory emotions (Loewenstein and Lerner), but more specifically emotions related to agency (“driving anticipatory emotions”). Temporal inconsistency—preference for the earlier option, or on the contrary “negative preference” (Loewenstein and Prelec)—can be related to the possibility or impossibility of including different options at different times in the same agent’s action program. Other explanations: logarithmic perception of time—Takahashi—or relation between impatience and positive emotions—Geoffard and Lucchini—are also discussed.

Keywords

• emotions
• temporal discounting
• negative preference
• agency
• emotional perception of time.