Our Seminars & Workshops

Both human and non-human animals often appear remarkably impatient in intertemporal choice, particularly in the presence of immediately available rewards. While research has generated a large number of models describing the commonly observed choice patterns (including different functional forms of delay discounting or reward-delay tradeoffs), there is a comparative dearth of theoretical frameworks aiming to explain the psychological mechanisms giving rise to the observed phenomena. In my talk, I will focus on a relatively recently proposed theoretical framework originating from Reinforcement Learning Theory and present a series of preregistered studies that investigated the existence of an intertemporal Pavlovian bias and its potential contributions to present-biased choice as well as suboptimal behaviors and mental health.