A big data analysis of the relationship between thinking and decision-making

Robert Thorstada,1 and Phillip Wolffa

aDepartment of , Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322

Edited by Carol S. Dweck, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved December 29, 2017 (received for review April 20, 2017)

We use big data methods to investigate how decision-making It has also been found that decisions made by healthy individ- might depend on future sightedness (that is, on how far into the uals do not always follow their level of future sightedness, but future people’s thoughts about the future extend). In study 1, we interestingly, decisions made by schizophrenics often do follow establish a link between future thinking and decision-making at their level of future sightedness (7). Finally, pathological gam- the population level in showing that US states with citizens hav- blers who, as expected, tend to choose impulsively on a delay ing relatively far future sightedness, as reflected in their tweets, discounting task do not, as expected, have unusually short future take fewer than citizens in states having relatively near sightedness (8). future sightedness. In study 2, we analyze people’s tweets to The inconsistent findings could represent evidence against the confirm a connection between future sightedness and decision- role of future sightedness in decision making, or they could making at the individual level in showing that people with long reflect a more general issue concerning the measurement of future sightedness are more likely to choose larger future rewards future thinking. Psychological measurements usually involve a over smaller immediate rewards. In study 3, we show that tak- scale or prompt in which people are asked to introspect about ing decreases with increases in future sightedness as reflected in their own mental states. Despite the well-known limitations of people’s tweets. The ability of future sightedness to predict deci- explicit measures, such tasks continue to be used due to the sions suggests that future sightedness is a relatively stable cogni- absence of alternative approaches (9, 10). In the case of future tive characteristic. This implication was supported in an analysis sightedness, assessments typically involve use of the Wallace task of tweets by over 38,000 people that showed that future sighted- (1). In this task, people are asked to imagine future events in ness has both state and trait characteristics (study 4). In study 5, their life and then report the amount of time until their occur- we provide evidence for a potential mechanism by which future rence. When completing the Wallace task, people often talk sightedness can affect decisions in showing that far future sight- about major life events, such as getting married or finishing a edness can make the future seem more connected to the , degree, and not everyday events, such as going home early or as reflected in how people refer to the present, past, and future mowing the lawn. People tend to report the kinds of events that in their tweets over the course of several minutes. Our studies they believe the experimenter is most interested in. show how big data methods can be applied to naturalistic data to One way to avoid the biases associated with the pragmatics of reveal underlying psychological properties and processes. an explicit question-answering task is through an analysis of peo- ple’s naturally occurring language. A source for such language is future thinking | decision-making | big data what people write on social media websites such as Twitter. On Twitter, individuals share short 140-character messages called hinking about the future can lead to better decisions. It can “tweets.” Many individuals use Twitter (n = 313 million users Tlead people to stay in school, save money, and take care worldwide), and these users are generally representative of the of their families and homes. While thinking about the future is clearly adaptive, failures to do so often occur: people regularly Significance gamble, overspend, and eat unhealthy foods. They make deci- sions that put their physical and psychological health at risk. One The way that people think about the future can affect their way that they may fail to consider the future is by not looking far decisions. Our results suggest that individuals who think far enough into the future to appreciate what might happen. Good into the future make a variety of future-oriented decisions, decision-making may depend on a person’s future sightedness such as investing in the future and avoiding future harms. Our (that is, on the average length of time into the future that peo- results also suggest that future thinking may affect decisions ple’s thoughts extend) (1). Individuals with relatively far future by making the future seem more connected to the present. sightedness may be more likely than those with near future sight- More broadly, our results show the viability of using auto- edness to factor the future into their decisions, possibly by view- mated analysis of social media text to measure psychological ing future events as more connected to the present. constructs. Automated analyses of social media are naturalis- The potential impact of future sightedness on decision-making tic (increasing sensitivity to a range of future events), unso- has been examined in several studies. Near future sightedness licited (reducing the effects of experimenter prompting), and has been found to be associated with several kinds of addic- scalable to millions of tweets generated by tens of thousands tion, including (2), dependence (3), and gam- of individuals. bling (4). Far future sightedness has been found to be associ- ated with healthy , such as investment in long-term Author contributions: R.T. and P.W. designed research; R.T. performed research; R.T. and savings accounts (5). However, when the relationship between P.W. analyzed data; and R.T. and P.W. wrote the paper. future sightedness and has been investigated directly, The authors declare no conflict of interest. the results have been less consistent. Such comparisons have This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. been conducted in what are known as delay discounting tasks, Published under the PNAS license. in which people respond to questions such as “Would you prefer Data deposition: The data from the studies reported in this paper have been deposited $60 today or $100 in 6 mo?” Based on these tasks, it has been in the open science framework, https://osf.io/fr4nb/. found that patients with relatively near future sightedness due to 1 To correspondence should be addressed. Email: [email protected]. lesions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex do not necessarily This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10. choose smaller immediate rewards than healthy individuals (6). 1073/pnas.1706589115/-/DCSupplemental.

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PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PNAS PLUS COGNITIVE SCIENCES seatbelt use as a measure of risk is in SI Text). Tweets from Additional analyses indicated a relation between future sight- each state were collected from all 50 US states (n = 8,163,153). edness and decision-making, risky decision-making in particular. Future sightedness was determined by averaging the temporal People in states with far future sightedness took fewer risks than distances into the future automatically generated by the SUTime people in states with near future sightedness: r(44) = −0.513; classifier. P < 0.001 (Fig. 2A). Looking at the individual variables used in the composite, future sightedness correlated negatively with Predictions Regarding Future Sightedness, , and drunk driving rates [r(44) = −0.401; P = 0.006] and teenage Past Sightedness. Our main hypothesis holds that the impact of pregnancy rates [r(44) = −0.380; P = 0.009] and marginally with future thinking on decision-making depends on future sighted- cigarette smoking rates [r(44) = −0.262; P = 0.079]. ness and not necessarily on, for example, temporal orientation Additional analyses indicated that the relation between future (that is, the proportion of time that people think about the sightedness and risk taking could not be accounted for by sev- future as opposed to the past). Future orientation was deter- eral alternative explanations. One alternative hypothesis is that mined by dividing the number of future references by the num- the relation between future sightedness and risk taking might be ber of future plus past references as reflected in the formula: explained by various demographic variables such as age, edu- F FO = F+P , where F and P are the numbers of tweets from a state cation, gender, race, state gross domestic product, per capita that refer to the future and the past, respectively. In addition, gross domestic product, household income, number of tweets, our main hypothesis holds that the impact of temporal thinking political orientation, and population size. This turned out not to on decision-making should be restricted to thoughts about the be the case. On their own, demographic variables were able to future and not those associated with the past. Thus, we expected account for a significant proportion of the variance in decision- decision-making to be related to future sightedness but not past making (R2 = 0.518), but adding future sightedness to the model sightedness. A state’s past sightedness was determined in the resulted in a significant increase in variance explained by the same way as future sightedness but using tweets that referred to model [R2 = 0.671; F(1,34) = 15.79; P < 0.001]. Another alter- the past. native hypothesis is that the relation between future sightedness and risk taking might not have to do with distance in the future Results. One-way ANOVA indicated that US states differed with per se but rather might relate to the proportion of time that respect to future sightedness: F(45, 268,298) = 124.01; P < 0.001. people think about the future as opposed to the past (that is, Relative differences in future sightedness are depicted in Fig. their temporal orientation). Interestingly, future orientation in 1. To aid in the description of these differences, future sight- particular and future sightedness were both found to be associ- edness was grouped into nine geographic regions as specified ated with risk-taking behavior but in different ways. As already by the US Census Bureau (Pacific, Mountain, West North Cen- noted, future sightedness was negatively associated with risk tak- tral, East North Central, West South Central, East South Cen- ing. In contrast, future orientation was positively associated with tral, South Atlantic, Middle Atlantic, New England). As with the risk taking [r(44) = 0.548; P < 0.001] and negatively associ- states, regions of the differed with respect to future ated with future sightedness [r(44) = −0.351; P = 0.017]. The sightedness: F(8,37) = 2.644; P = 0.021. In general, future sight- results imply that future sightedness has a unique effect on risky edness was longer on the East and West Coasts than in the mid- behavior and that the relationship between future sightedness dle states. Future sightedness was highest in the New England and risk taking cannot be reduced to thoughts about the future (M = 1.66 d), South Atlantic (M = 1.56 d), and Pacific (M = in general. A third alternative hypothesis is that the relationship 1.42 d) regions. Lower future sightedness was found in regions in between future sightedness and risk taking might not be unique the middle of the country, including the Mountain (M = 1.38 d), to thoughts about the future but rather, might be due to a gen- East South Central (M = 1.35 d), East North Central (M = eral tendency to think distantly into either the future or past. 1.30 d), West North Central (M = 1.28 d), and West South Cen- As it turned out, only future sightedness, and not past sight- tral (M = 1.26 d) regions. One exception to this pattern was the edness, was predictive of risk-taking behavior: r(44) = −0.150; Middle Atlantic (M = 1.35 d), which was noticeably lower than P = 0.318. Finally, concerns might be raised about the repre- the other coastal regions. These results indicate that future sight- sentativeness of the sampling methodology. According to the edness varies across the United States. The overall mean future PEW Foundation (11), the percentages of Twitter users living sightedness in the United States was 1.39 d. in rural, urban, and suburban areas are virtually the same, and

Fig. 1. Future sightedness in days of each US state. Darker colors indicate a longer future sightedness. The color map is log scaled.

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PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PNAS PLUS COGNITIVE SCIENCES data alone. In line with previous delay discounting tasks, the ical Turk workers (n = 154) completed an online version of the average reward index was 76.28 (24, 25). BART (27). Participants also provided their Twitter username, Follow-up analyses ruled out two alternative explanations for which was used to access their tweets and classify their future the relationship between future sightedness and investment. The sightedness. relation between future sightedness and investment is uniquely Participants were excluded from the analysis if they did associated with thoughts about the future. In particular, there not complete the task (n = 3), had tweets that could not be was no evidence that discounting could be explained by past accessed (n = 21), or had tweets without any reference to sightedness: r(126) = 0.114; P = 0.202. Also important, not all the future that could be detected by SUTime (n = 6). A scat- thoughts about the future were relevant to predicting invest- terplot of the results is depicted in Fig. 2C. As predicted, ment behavior. Future orientation (that is, the tendency to think future sightedness was negatively associated with risk taking about the future as opposed to the past) was not associated with [r(122) = −0.190; P = 0.035], implying that individuals with far investment behavior [r(126) = 0.052; P = 0.557], indicating that future sightedness took fewer risks than those with near future investment behavior depends on how far an individual thinks sightedness. Follow-up analyses ruled out three alternative into the future and not their tendency to think about the future explanations for the results. First, the relation between future in general. The results differ from those in study 1, in which sightedness and risk taking was unique to thoughts about the evidence for a relation between future sightedness and invest- future; there was no evidence of a relation between risking tak- ment behavior was not found. The reason why such evidence ing and past sightedness: r(121) = −0.041; P = 0.650. Second, may have emerged in this study is because studies at the level of the association between future sightedness and risk taking was individuals allow for greater control of potentially confounding associated with how far people’s thoughts extended into the variables. future; future orientation, as measured by the proportions of time that people’s tweets were about the future as opposed to Study 3: The Effect of Future Sightedness on Decision-Making the past, was not associated with risk taking: r(122) = 0.051; in Individuals: Risk Taking P = 0.574. Third, linear regression revealed that, while gender In study 1, future sightedness was found to be negatively asso- and age explained some variance in risk taking (R2 = 0.072), ciated with risk taking at the population level. This study adding future sightedness to the model significantly increased investigated this relation at the level of individuals. If future the variance explained [R2 = 0.137; F(1,115) = 8.559; P = 0.004]. sightedness affects decision-making with respect to risks, then In sum, the results provide further support for the hypoth- individuals with far future sightedness should be less likely than esis that the effect of future thinking on decision-making those with short future sightedness to behave in a way that makes depends on how far into the future people’s thoughts about the them vulnerable to future costs. future extend. In study 3, risky behavior was measured using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) (26). In this task (Fig. 4), partici- Study 4: Future Sightedness as a Cognitive Characteristic pants are presented with a series of opportunities to earn money The results from studies 2 and 3 imply that how one thinks about by inflating a balloon. Participants can earn real money every the future is a relatively stable characteristic of one’s psychol- time that they inflate the balloon, but they also take a risk in ogy. This is implied by the findings that people’s decisions in doing so, because each inflation can lead to the balloon popping, these previous studies could be predicted from their past writ- resulting in no money earned for that trial. If participants stop ings. Psychological characteristics that are relatively stable have inflating before the balloon pops, they can bank the money that been studied extensively with respect to personality and intelli- they have earned and proceed to the next trial. Amazon Mechan- gence (28–31). The findings here point to another kind of psycho- logical characteristic, a cognitive characteristic, concerning how people think about the future. Whereas the results from studies 2 and 3 imply psychologi- cal stability, the results from study 1 point to psychological vari- ability. In study 1, future sightedness was found to associated with where one lives, suggesting that future sightedness might depend, in part, on contextual factors. It seems then that an analysis of the stability of a person’s future sightedness would likely reveal that future sightedness has both trait- and state-like properties. The state and trait properties of future sightedness can be studied through an analysis of people’s tweets. In particular, if future sightedness is a trait, then the average difference in future sightedness between two tweets should be smaller when those two tweets are sampled from the same individual than when they are sampled from different individuals. However, to the extent that future sightedness is a state, then the difference in future sightedness between two tweets should be larger as the distance in time increases. These predictions were tested by compiling multiple years’ worth of tweets from a large number of people (n = 90,063,490 tweets from 38,655 individuals) and analyzing the variation in future sightedness within and between individuals. The results indicated that future sightedness has both trait Fig. 4. The BART. Participants’ goal is to earn money by inflating a series of and state properties. In support of future sightedness being a 20 balloons. Participants can click “inflate balloon” to earn money or “cash trait and as shown in Fig. 5A, the average difference in future in $” to proceed to the next trial. However, if the participant clicks inflate sightedness for sets of tweets drawn from the same individ- balloon, the balloon may instead pop, causing the participant to lose all ual (M = 4.2, SD = 1.0) was less than the average difference money earned for the trial. between sets of tweets drawn from different individuals (M = 4.9,

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PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PNAS PLUS COGNITIVE SCIENCES Not surprisingly, after talking about the present, individuals General Discussion were more likely to refer to the present than either the future The results support the hypothesis that the way that people think [t(29,383) = 15.01; P < 0.001] or the past [t(29,358) = 15.71; about the future has an impact on their decision-making. At the P < 0.001]. The finding that references to the present are asso- level of populations, US states that think farther into the future ciated with other references to the present more than they are were less likely to engage in risky decision-making. At the level associated with references to the future or past is exactly what of individuals, individuals who think farther into the future were would be predicted by a priming effect. Of critical interest to more likely to invest in the future and less likely to engage in the main hypothesis, after tweeting about the present, individ- risky decision-making. uals were more likely to tweet about the future than the past The future sightedness observed in individuals’ tweets was [t(29,349) = 4.28; P < 0.001], implying a tighter relationship short, usually on the order of days. This finding differs from prior between the present and the future than between the present work in which future sightedness was much longer: on the order and the past. of years (1, 6, 7). One reason for this difference may be that As expected and as shown in Fig. 6, the probability of refer- prior work explicitly asked individuals to retrieve future events, ring to the future after referring to the present differed as a whereas this study used an implicit measure of future sight- function of an individual’s future sightedness. Individuals with edness. The implicit measure, which resulted in shorter future far future sightedness were significantly more likely to reference sightedness, was seemingly more predictive of behavior than the the future than were individuals with near future sightedness: explicit measure of future sightedness. t(29,386) = 3.00; P = 0.003. Consistent with this finding, refer- Across studies 1–3, future sightedness was found to have a ences to the future increased over chance levels for those with far specific effect on decision-making. In study 1, in particular, future sightedness [t(14,430) = 2.30; P = 0.021] but not for those future sightedness and future orientation patterned differently: with near future sightedness [t(14,956) = −1.94; P = 0.053]. This far sightedness was associated with low risk taking, while high result was not explained by a general increase in temporal refer- future orientation was associated with high risk taking. This dif- ences in individuals with far future sightedness. Individuals with ference between future orientation and sightedness is quite inter- far future sightedness were no more likely to refer to the past esting. The association between future sightedness and risk tak- [t(29,360) = 0.67; P = 0.504] or present [t(29,397) = 1.103; P = ing is not especially surprising. Risk typically has two parts: a 0.270] after referring to the present. short-term reward and a potential long-term cost. For exam- The results support the hypothesis that the relation between ple, cigarette smoking provides pleasure in the near future but future thinking and decision-making depends on future sight- a health risk in the much longer future. Those who tend to look edness. Thinking far into the future leads people to see the far into the future may tend to weigh the cost part of risk taking present as more associated with the future. One potential expla- more than those who do not tend to look far into the future, and nation for why this should be the case is that future sighted- this could make them more risk averse. Less clear is the positive ness forges a connection between the present and the future relation between future orientation and risk taking (that is, why a with respect to concreteness. This idea is reflected in Con- tendency to think about the future is associated with risk taking). strual Level Theory (33, 34). Construal Level Theory hypoth- One detail that may help to explain this association is the find- esizes that, as events become more distant in time, they are ing from study 1 that high future orientation is negatively associ- construed more abstractly. To test this hypothesis, we reana- ated with future sightedness (that is, those who tended to think lyzed the corpus of tweets in study 5 with respect to the predic- about the future tended to look less far into it). Given this neg- tions of Construal Level Theory. This was accomplished using ative association, the reason why a tendency toward the future concreteness ratings of 40,000 English lemmas (35). The anal- might be associated with risk taking is because those who tend to ysis yielded two main findings. First, we found that, as tweets think about the future will tend to focus on the near future, which became more distant from the present, they became less con- in the case of risks, involves focusing on the rewards, likely pro- crete: r(10,086,705) = 0.052; P < 0.001. Second, we found that moting risk taking. Such an explanation leaves unexplained, how- those with far future sightedness talked less concretely about ever, why high future orientation is negatively associated with the present than those with near future sightedness: t(33,823) = distance into the future. At the risk of being circular, people who 2.44; P = 0.015. These results are consistent with a Con- are interested in the future might be those who wish to escape strual Level Theory account of our priming effect. Given that their circumstances and are in search of rewards in the near term. thoughts about the future become less concrete with distance Clearly, this curious and interesting set of relations is deserving into the future, the point where the level of abstractness in of additional attention. the present matches the level of abstractness in the future will While the future sightedness observed in tweets was quite tend to be farther into the future (and past) for those with short, it was also predictive of individuals’ future sightedness in far future sightedness than for those with near future sighted- a behavioral task and of individuals’ decisions. The results of ness. However, critical to this explanation is the preliminary study 4 suggest one reason why this may have been the case. finding that people with far future sightedness tend to construe The results of study 4 suggest that future sightedness is, in part, the present more abstractly than those with near future sight- a stable characteristic of individuals. However, the results also edness. This surprising phenomenon certainly deserves further suggest that future sightedness is, to some extent, a changeable examination. state. This pattern of results suggests that future sightedness may Our results support the hypothesis that individuals with far be modified across different contexts. For example, Twitter may future sightedness see the future as more connected to the induce relatively near future sightedness due to the tendency to present than do individuals with near future sightedness. In the tweet about more ordinary life events, while laboratory tasks may course of ordinary language, when an individual refers more induce relatively far future sightedness due to the pragmatics of often to the present, they are also more likely to refer to the the question-answering situation. While future sightedness may future but not the past. Additionally, after a present reference, be modified by context, the finding that future sightedness is also individuals are more likely to refer to the future than to the past. a trait explains why it should be correlated within an individual This effect is stronger for individuals with far future sightedness, across such contexts. suggesting that those with far future sightedness see the future The results from study 5 suggest a potential mechanism for the as more connected to the present than do those with near future impact of future sightedness on decision making. Tweets about sightedness. the present were more likely to be followed by tweets about

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G Lupyan R, Goldstone 10. xrse nti ulcto r hs fteato()add o neces- not opinions do and Foundation. The Templeton author(s) P.W.). John the the to of of views Compe- awarded those the are Research reflect was sarily publication A which this 2: Seligman, in expressed Martin Stage (to Psychology tition” “Prospective Grant Foundation split. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. median a near by with identified Individuals were SUTime. sightedness using future identified far was and corpus the Classification. in individual Sightedness Future 5: Study a after occurring ref- not present references a these reference. after of present proportions min the 0–5 by occurring divided references erence future and present, past, references future identi- and (ii were present, references past, (i temporal of counted were proportions corpus, The the SUTime. in using fied individual each Classification. For Reference used. 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Implicit-explicit (2007) B Nosek 9. validity Divergent (2006) P Donovick R, Mattson B, Castelda E, Anderson J, MacKillop 8. nalohrtet.Tedpnetmaue eetepootosof proportions the were measures dependent The tweets. other all in ) ucin fftr-retdtogt ndiylife. daily in thoughts future-oriented of functions 2018. http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2012/ 18, January at Accessed Available index.html. (LREC). Evaluation and expressions. assets. retirement and behaviors, health rates, 18, 2018. January Accessed www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016. sets. data occurring rally fmaue fcgiiedsotos musvt,adtm esetv ihpatholog- with perspective time gambling. and ical impulsivity, distortions, cognitive of measures of elndt rvd hi age). their provide to declined 5 = rceig fteItrainlCneec nLnug Resources Language on Conference International the of Proceedings atcpnscmltda2-ra eso fteBR sn a using BART the of version 20-trial a completed Participants abigStud Gambling J ntet curn – i fe rsn eeec and reference present a after min 0–5 occurring tweets in ) .0 e lc ntil hr h alo i not did balloon the where trials on click per $0.005 hsrsac a upre yJh Templeton John by supported was research This o onSci Cogn Top PNAS 22:339–354. | ulse nieFbur ,2018 5, February online Published 8:548–568. nttl 00340tet spanning tweets 90,063,490 total, In urDrPyhlSci Psychol Dir Curr mEo Rev Econ Am h uuesgtdeso each of sightedness future The h opsfo td was 4 study from corpus The plCg Psychol Cogn Appl ,3 wesprindi- per tweets 2,330 = 103:690–731. 16:65–69. fftr sight- future If fftr sight- future If 25:96–103. | E1747

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