Residential mobility mindset enhances temporal discounting in the loss framework

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Sociology

Background:

• Increased global mobility impacts psychological states and decision-making.
• Temporal discounting, the devaluation of future outcomes, is a key aspect of decision-making.
• The link between residential mobility and temporal discounting remains under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how residential mobility influences temporal discounting.
• To explore the neural mechanisms underlying this relationship using event-related potentials (ERPs).
• To examine the role of uncertainty in mediating the effect of mobility on temporal discounting.

Main Methods:

• Study 1: Manipulated residential mobility and stability to assess effects on temporal discounting.
• Study 2: Recorded ERPs during a gambling task with temporal feedback to identify neural correlates.
• Study 3: Measured the sense of uncertainty associated with residential mobility.

Main Results:

• Residential mobility significantly heightened temporal discounting compared to stability.
• Event-related potentials (ERPs), specifically the feedback-related negativity (FRN), reflected temporal discounting.
• Mobility-primed individuals showed altered FRN responses to future monetary losses, not gains.
• Residential mobility was associated with an increased sense of uncertainty.

Conclusions:

• Residential mobility enhances temporal discounting by altering neural processing of monetary loss.
• Increased uncertainty due to residential mobility contributes to heightened temporal discounting.
• Socioecological factors, like residential mobility, significantly influence intertemporal decisions.