Thinking about your future self: Do better perspective-takers make more patient decisions?

Decisions involving costs and rewards materialising at different points in time (intertemporal decisions) are prevalent in everyday life and can have significant consequences for well-being across the lifespan. Recent neuroimaging research points to overlapping neural mechanisms in intertemporal decision-making and perspective-taking, suggesting they may involve common cognitive processes, but there has been limited research examining whether individual differences in these two capacities are related at a behavioural level. The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals with better perspective-taking abilities would make more future-oriented decisions. 235 participants (200 after exclusions) completed an intertemporal choice task, followed by behavioural and self-report measures of perspective-taking. Contrary to expectations, there were no overall correlations between perspective-taking measures and intertemporal decision-making. However, exploratory analysis found that perspective-taking abilities were increasingly associated with future-oriented decisions among participants who perceived themselves to be higher on the socioeconomic ladder, with some evidence indicating that among low socioeconomic status individuals, better perspective-takers may be more likely to discount future rewards. These findings suggest that rather than enabling patience, perspective-taking abilities may facilitate greater flexibility in intertemporal decision-making, potentially increasing or decreasing temporal discounting depending on the environmental context of the decision-maker.