Intertemporal tradeoffs, the conflict between current and future costs and benefits, lie at the core of health decisions. An extensive literature on time discounting has documented the widespread tendency to place a lower value on distant outcomes and to favor benefits in the moment. These...

Consumers' intertemporal preferences have been studied across multiple theoretical and applied areas. This article outlines research showing that the context in which intertemporal preferences are expressed matters, as well as research exploring the mechanisms that account for these effects....

The focus in this chapter is on the psychological foundation of intertemporal decisions and the consequences for people’s decisions and behaviors. Rather than simply update the numerous excellent past reviews with a focus on the discounting phenomena, the emphasis in this chapter is on recent...