Humans and animals are biased towards immediate rewards. This bias manifests itself daily in mundane choices, such as choosing between eating and dieting, shopping and saving, or play and work. In some cases, however, impulsive decisions can have serious clinical consequences. Intertemporal choice (also known as impulsive choice or delay discounting) is one form of impulsivity that manifests as a preference for an immediate small-magnitude reward over a delayed larger reward, as the subjective value of the delayed reward diminishes.
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