Changing delay discounting in the light of the competing neurobehavioral decision systems theory: a review

Abstract

Excessively devaluing delayed reinforcers co-occurs with a wide variety of clinical conditions such as drug dependence, obesity, and excessive gambling. If excessive delay discounting is a trans-disease process that underlies the choice behavior leading to these and other negative health conditions, efforts to change an individual's discount rate are arguably important. Although discount rate is often regarded as a relatively stable trait, descriptions of interventions and environmental manipulations that successfully alter discount rate have begun to appear in the literature. In this review, we compare published examples of procedures that change discount rate and classify them into categories of procedures, including therapeutic interventions, direct manipulation of the executive decision-making system, framing effects, physiological state effects, and acute drug effects. These changes in discount rate are interpreted from the perspective of the competing neurobehavioral decision systems theory, which describes a combination of neurological and behavioral processes that account for delay discounting. We also suggest future directions that researchers could take to identify the mechanistic processes that allow for changes in discount rate and to test whether the competing neurobehavioral decision systems view of delay discounting is correct.

Fig. 1

The hypothetical interactions between the impulsive and executive decision-making systems indicate that propensity to make choices that underlie unhealthy behavior patterns can arise from a variety of combinations of contributions of the two systems. The shaded area indicates an increased risk of developing an addiction, gambling disorder, or other disorder of self-control (adapted from Bickel, Mueller, & Jarmolowicz, in press).