Dorien Bangma

28 | CHAPTER 2 participants receive another offer: They can also choose a lower amount of money which they can receive earlier in time. Participants are requested to indicate the lowest amount of money they would accept today or after a relatively short delay (i.e., ‘in one week’ or ‘in one month’, depending on the scenario) instead of receiving the relatively high amount of money after a longer delay (e.g., ‘ Which amount of money would you accept today instead of receiving €100 in one month?’ ). To visualize the options, participants receive a table with several offers/options (Figure 2.3). Participants also have the option to renounce the lower offer and to choose to wait until they can hypothetically receive the original offer. If participants choose a lower offer, their choice will be checked by offering them one lower option from the table, to ensure their choice is the lowest offer that they would accept. For example (Figure 2.3), if a participant chose to receive €80 today instead of €100 in one month, the examiner asks “ If I offer you €80 today, you would accept this money instead of €100 in one month, is this correct? But if I offer you today €75 instead of €100 in one month, which of these options would you choose” . If the participant indicates that in this latter offer, he or she would not accept €75, €80 will be indicated as the lowest amount of money he or she would accept. If the participant decides to also accept €75, the procedure will be repeated and lower options will be offered to the participant until he or she no longer accepts the offer. Six different time-interval combinations are used (i.e., ‘today vs. one week’, ‘today vs. one month’, ‘today vs. one year’, ‘one week vs. one month’, ‘one week vs. one year’ and ‘one month vs. one year’). Each time interval is presented once with €100, €500 or €1000 as the highest offer. In half of the scenarios the offers on the tables are offered in ascending order (e.g., from €1 to €95) and in the other half of the scenarios the offers on the tables are presented in descending order (e.g., from €95 to €1). The offers are presented in increments of five euros (i.e., in the €100 condition) or ten euros (i.e., in the €500 and €1000 condition), with exception Figure 2.3. One of the eighteen scenarios of the Temporal Discounting Task, including the option of receiving €100 euro in one month or a (lower) offer which can be received today. The participants are asked to indicate the lowest offer that he/she would accept today instead of the relative high offer later in time.