Trial-wise exposure to visual emotional cues increases physiological arousal but not temporal discounting

Humans and many animals devalue future rewards as a function of time (temporal discounting). Increased discounting has been linked to various psychiatric conditions, including substance-use-disorders, behavioral addictions, and obesity. Despite its high intra-individual stability, temporal discounting is partly under contextual control. One prominent manipulation that has been linked to increases in discounting is the exposure to highly arousing appetitive cues. However, results from trial-wise cue exposure studies appear highly mixed, and changes in physiological arousal were not adequately controlled. Here we tested the effects of appetitive (erotic), aversive, and neutral visual cues on temporal discounting in 35 healthy male participants. The contribution of single-trial physiological arousal was assessed using comprehensive monitoring of autonomic activity (pupil size, heart rate, electrodermal activity). Physiological arousal was elevated following aversive and in particular erotic cues. In contrast to our pre-registered hypothesis, steepness of temporal discounting was not significantly affected by emotional cues of either valence. Aversive cues tended to increase decision noise. Computational modeling revealed that trial-wise arousal only accounted for minor variance over and above aversive and erotic condition effects, arguing against a general effect of physiological arousal on temporal discounting.