First impressions or good endings? Preferences depend on when you ask

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Decision Science
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Human decision-making often involves evaluating experiences with temporally extended rewards.
• Understanding how temporal reward patterns influence preferences and memory is crucial for decision science.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how the timing of rewards within an experience affects preferences and valuation.
• To determine the impact of evaluation timing on the influence of reward sequence on preferences.

Main Methods:

• Nine studies with 569 participants used a "garage sale" task involving sequences of objects with varying reward distributions (early, middle, late, even).
• Preferences and valuations were assessed both shortly after learning and after an overnight delay.
• Memory recall for object-value associations was also measured.

Main Results:

• Shortly after learning, participants strongly preferred and overvalued experiences with early rewards, impairing object-value memory.
• After an overnight delay, preferences became equal across all reward distribution timings (early, middle, late, even).
• Evaluating an experience shortly after it occurred led to lasting preferences for early rewards.

Conclusions:

• People summarize rewarding experiences non-linearly and in a time-dependent manner, integrating affect, memory, and decision-making.
• Short-term preferences are susceptible to "first impression" biases from early rewards.
• Delayed evaluation allows for memory summarization, leading to more adaptive, long-term preferences based on the entire experience.