The relations between temporal and social perceptual biases: Evidence from perceptual matching

We report a new "now-bias" effect on simple perceptual matching between shapes and labels and examined the relation between this now-bias effect and the self-bias previously established with this task (Sui, He, & Humphreys, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 1105-1117, 2012). The perceptual biases favoring present-relevant and self-relevant information were correlated with each other, suggesting a common underlying mechanism. Nevertheless, temporal biases in decision making, specifically in temporal discounting, correlated with the perceptual self-bias but not with the perceptual now-bias. We suggest that common attentional biases to present-relevant and self-relevant information mediate perceptual prioritization, whereas temporal discounting is likely involved in a separate reward evaluation mechanism that relates to self-bias processes.