Short-term cost for long-term benefit: time preference and cancer control

A tradeoff between short-term costs and long-term gains characterizes many cancer control behaviors, such as behavior change (e.g., quitting smoking), screening (e.g., mammography), and prevention (e.g., healthy diet). One factor that may influence these tradeoffs is time preference, or the value assigned to future outcomes relative to immediate ones. Studies of the relationship between individual differences in time preference and preventive health behaviors, however, have yielded mixed results. Time preference is related to addictive behaviors (e.g., smoking) but not to other preventive health behaviors (e.g., vaccination). This pattern of results suggests that time preference measures reflect an ability to forgo immediate gratification that is applicable to hot behaviors, such as smoking, but not to cold behaviors, such as vaccination.