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Temporal Attention, the Sunk Cost Effect, and Delay Discounting By

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Temporal Attention, the Sunk Cost Effect, and Delay Discounting By Temporal Attention, the Sunk Cost Effect, and Delay Discounting By © 2018 Michael J. Sofis Submitted to the graduate degree program in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chair: David P. Jarmolowicz, Ph.D. ________________________________ Derek D. Reed, Ph.D., BCBA-D ________________________________ Vincent T. Francisco, Ph.D. ________________________________ Jeffrey S. Stein, Ph.D. ________________________________ Michael A. Johnson, Ph.D. Date Defended: June 26, 2018 The dissertation committee for Michael J. Sofis certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Temporal Attention, the Sunk Cost Effect, and Delay Discounting Chair: David P. Jarmolowicz, Ph.D. Date Approved: June 26, 2018 ii Abstract The sunk cost effect, known as the degree to which an initial investment of time, effort, or money increases the likelihood of continued investment, and delay discounting, defined as how rapidly the subjective value of a reward declines as a function of the delay to its receipt, incorporate the role of temporally distant stimuli, but have not been evaluated simultaneously. One process that may link the two phenomena is the temporal attention hypothesis, which holds that the degree to which one perceives distant events as close to the present, and one’s ability to shift their temporal focus from now to not now, jointly contributes to the mechanism of delay discounting. The first of the two experiments showed that participants with higher subjective time perception (i.e., perceived distant objective time points as subjectively closer to the present) committed more sunk cost across hypothetical temporal gaps between the initial and terminal links, and exhibited lower rates of delay discounting than those with lower subjective time perception. In Experiment 2, the same sunk cost procedure was used, except that four temporal gap conditions were used that matched the time points used in the delay discounting task. Further, participants experienced either negative, neutral, or positively valenced income narratives, which have previously been shown to alter rates of delay discounting. Additionally, probed time points in the future and past subjective time perception tasks more closely matched those used in the delay discounting and sunk cost tasks, and both future and past subjective time perception were derived used Mazur’s (1987) hyperbolic model. A series of Quade non- parametric ANCOVAs failed to reveal a significant effect of income narrative on delay discounting, any measure of sunk cost, future or past subjective time perception, and past, present, and future temporal focus. Extra sum of squares tests revealed, however, that hyperboloid models of mean sunk cost and median indifference data across the three groups were iii better fit to separate curves than one curve. Hyperbolic decline in subjective time perception (Ln (k)) for future and past subjective time perception were strongly correlated and were combined together to form the measure joint time perception, which correlated with delay discounting, but did not correlate with any measure of sunk cost. Future subjective time perception was divided by past subjective time perception to form the measure of time perception index, which was only correlated with sunk cost measures, but not delay discounting. Overall sunk cost (i.e., terminal investment percentage of $5 initial investments subtracted by $35 initial investments) was directly correlated with delay discounting such that greater amounts of sunk cost related to lower rates of delay discounting, providing added evidence that the sunk cost effect may relate to lower rates of discounting. Implications, limitations, and future directions related to these findings are discussed. iv Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Delay Discounting .................................................................................................................... 1 Past delay discounting......................................................................................................... 3 Temporal Attention ................................................................................................................... 5 The Sunk Cost Effect ................................................................................................................ 6 Sunk cost vs. escalation. ..................................................................................................... 7 The sunk cost as temporal decision-making paradigm. ...................................................... 9 Time Perception ...................................................................................................................... 11 Time perception and temporal attention. .......................................................................... 14 Integrating the Sunk Cost Effect, Delay Discounting, and Temporal Attention .................... 16 Pilot evidence of the sunk cost and delay discounting overlap. ....................................... 18 Verbal Behavior and Cross-Species Implication in Temporal Decision-Making .................. 22 Verbal behavior and delay discounting............................................................................. 22 Verbal behavior and the sunk cost effect. ......................................................................... 23 Competing Neurobehavioral Decision Systems. .............................................................. 25 Narrative theory. ............................................................................................................... 26 Statement of Problem .............................................................................................................. 30 Methods......................................................................................................................................... 31 Subjects ................................................................................................................................... 31 Procedure ................................................................................................................................ 33 Income narrative conditions. ............................................................................................. 33 v Temporal focus scale. ....................................................................................................... 35 Subjective time perception task. ....................................................................................... 36 Delay discounting task. ..................................................................................................... 37 Temporal sunk cost task.................................................................................................... 38 Data Analysis .......................................................................................................................... 41 Delay discounting task. ..................................................................................................... 41 Subjective time perception. ............................................................................................... 42 Temporal sunk cost task.................................................................................................... 42 Comparisons. .................................................................................................................... 44 Results ..................................................................................................................................... 45 Normality and income narrative group covariates. ........................................................... 46 Demographics. .................................................................................................................. 46 Model fitting and dependent measures. ............................................................................ 47 Delay discounting. ...................................................................................................... 48 Subjective time perception. ......................................................................................... 48 Sunk cost instances. .................................................................................................... 48 Pre-task mood scores. ....................................................................................................... 49 The sunk cost effect across narrative groups. ................................................................... 50 Delay discounting across narrative groups. ...................................................................... 52 Subjective time perception across narrative groups.......................................................... 53 Temporal focus across narrative groups. .......................................................................... 55 Subjective time perception and temporal focus. ............................................................... 56 Aggregate sunk cost. ......................................................................................................... 56 vi Correlation coefficients. ...................................................................................................
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