Does temporal discounting explain unhealthy behavior? A systematic review and reinforcement learning perspective.

ABSTRACT: The tendency to make unhealthy choices is hypothesized to be related to an individual's temporal discount rate, the theoretical rate at which they devalue delayed rewards. Furthermore, a particular form of temporal discounting, hyperbolic discounting, has been proposed to explain why unhealthy behavior can occur despite healthy intentions. We examine these two hypotheses in turn. We first systematically review studies which investigate whether discount rates can predict unhealthy behavior. These studies reveal that high discount rates for money (and in some instances food or drug rewards) are associated with several unhealthy behaviors and markers of health status, establishing discounting as a promising predictive measure. We secondly examine whether intention-incongruent unhealthy action

SUBMITTER: Story GW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3950931 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature