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Updated: Nov 8, 2025

Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task
Published on: January 9, 2016
Is resolve mainly about resisting hyperbolic discounting?
Don Ross1,2,3
1School of Society, Politics, and Ethics, University College Cork, CorkT12 AW89, Ireland.
Abstract:
Ainslie insightfully refines the concept of willpower by emphasizing low-effort applications of resolve. However, he gives undue weight to intertemporal discounting as the problem that willpower is needed to overcome. Nonhumans typically don't encounter choices that differ only in the time of consumption. Humans learn to transform uncertainty into problems they can solve using culturally evolved mechanisms for quantifying risk.
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