Delay discounting and under-valuing of recent information predict poorer adherence to social distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic

Assessing the relationship between delay discounting and decisions to engage in various protective behaviors during COVID-19

Research suggests that discounting of delayed rewards (i.e., tendency to choose smaller immediate rewards over large later rewards) is a promising target of intervention to encourage compliance with public health measures (PHM), such as vaccination compliance. The effects of delay discounting, however, may differ across the types of PHMs, given that the benefits of vaccination, unlike other PHMs (physical distancing, handwashing, and mask-wearing), are more temporally delayed. Here, we examined whether delay discounting predicts engaging in COVID-19 PHMs in approximately 7,000 participants recruited from 13 countries in June-August 2021. After controlling for demographic and distress variables, delay discounting was a negative predictor of vaccination, but a positive predictor of physical distancing (when restrictions are in place) and handwashing. There was no significant association between delay discounting and frequency of mask-wearing. It is possible that increasing vaccination compliance may require greater emphasis on future benefits of vaccination, whereas promotion of physical distancing and hand hygiene may require greater focus on the present moment. Further research is needed to investigate the nature of this relationship and its implications for public health messaging.

Understanding patch foraging strategies across development

Patch foraging is a near-ubiquitous behaviour across the animal kingdom and characterises many decision-making domains encountered by humans. We review how a disposition to explore in adolescence may reflect the evolutionary conditions under which hunter-gatherers foraged for resources. We propose that neurocomputational mechanisms responsible for reward processing, learning, and cognitive control facilitate the transition from exploratory strategies in adolescence to exploitative strategies in adulthood - where individuals capitalise on known resources. This developmental transition may be disrupted by psychopathology, as there is emerging evidence of biases in explore/exploit choices in mental health problems. Explore/exploit choices may be an informative marker for mental health across development and future research should consider this feature of decision-making as a target for clinical intervention.

A mini-review on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected intertemporal choice

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has extremely harmful effects on individual lifestyles, and at present, people must make financial or survival decisions under the profound changes frequently. Although it has been reported that COVID-19 changed decision-making patterns, the underlying mechanisms remained unclear. This mini-review focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on intertemporal choice, and potential psychological, biological, and social factors that mediate this relationship. A search of the Web of Science electronic database yielded 23 studies. The results showed that under the COVID-19 pandemic, people tended to choose immediate and smaller rewards, and became less patient. In particular, people with negative emotions, in a worse condition of physical health, or who did not comply with their government restriction rules tended to become more "short-sighted" in behavioral terms. Future studies should examine more longitudinal and cross-cultural research to give a broad view about the decision-making change under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Can delay discounting predict vaccine hesitancy 4-years later? A study among US young adults

Despite being a major threat to health, vaccine hesitancy (i.e., refusal or reluctance to vaccinate despite vaccine availability) is on the rise. Using a longitudinal cohort of young adults (N = 1260) from Los Angeles County, California we investigated the neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Data were collected at two time points: during adolescence (12th grade; fall 2016; average age = 16.96 (±0.42)) and during young adulthood (spring 2021; average age = 21.33 (±0.49)). Main outcomes and measures were delay discounting (DD; fall 2016) and tendency to act rashly when experiencing positive and negative emotions (UPPS-P; fall 2016); self-reported vaccine hesitancy and vaccine beliefs/knowledge (spring 2021). A principal components analysis determined four COVID-19 vaccine beliefs/knowledge themes: Collective Responsibility, Confidence and Risk Calculation, Complacency, and Convenience. Significant relationships were found between themes, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, and DD. Collective Responsibility (β = -1.158[-1.213,-1.102]) and Convenience (β = -0.132[-0.185,-0.078]) scores were negatively associated, while Confidence and Risk Calculation (β = 0.283[0.230,0.337]) and Complacency (β = 0.412[0.358,0.466]) scores were positively associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Additionally, Collective Responsibility (β = -0.060[-0.101,-0.018]) was negatively associated, and Complacency (β = -0.063[0.021,0.105]) was positively associated with DD from fall 2016. Mediation analysis revealed immediacy bias during adolescence, measured by DD, predicted vaccine hesitancy 4 years later while being mediated by two types of vaccine beliefs/knowledge: Collective Responsibility (β = 0.069[0.022,0.116]) and Complacency (β = 0.026[0.008,0.044]). These findings provide a further understanding of individual vaccine-related decision-making among young adults and inform public health messaging to increase vaccination acceptance.

Delay discounting of money and health outcomes, and adherence to policy guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic

Delay discounting refers to the observation that the subjective value of an outcome decreases as the delay to its receipt increases. It is well-established that steep delay discounting is related to various maladaptive behaviors, including poorer health-related choices. One of the current challenges of public health policies that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic is to encourage preventive behaviors against infectious diseases. In this study, we aimed to explore possible underpinnings of adherence to COVID-19 related public health policy guidelines such as disinfection, distancing, and masks (DDM). Participants completed monetary and health discounting tasks across two outcome amounts in gain and loss conditions, and they provided self-report measures of adherence to the DDM policy. Contrary to the theoretically plausible prediction that higher discounting rates would be negatively associated with adherence to health-related public policy guidelines, we found no compelling evidence to support such statement. We discuss the potential weaknesses of declarative measurements of attitudes toward COVID-19 and consider using behavioral interventions for influencing discounting rates for complementing and enhancing current policy guidelines.

Delay discounting, probability discounting, and interdental cleaning frequency

Background

Interdental cleaning is recommended by dentists but many people do not floss regularly. The health benefits of interdental cleaning are delayed, and sensitivity to delay is an important factor in many health behaviors. Thus, the present studies explore the relationship between frequency of flossing, and sensitivity to delayed and probabilistic outcomes.

Method

Crowd-sourced subjects were recruited in two studies (n = 584 and n = 321, respectively). In both studies, subjects reported their frequency of flossing and completed delay discounting and probability discounting tasks. Discounting was measured with area under the curve, and linear regression was used to analyze the results.

Results

Findings show that higher levels of delay discounting were associated with less frequent flossing (p < 0.001, both studies). In contrast, probability discounting was not significantly associated with flossing frequency (ns, both studies).

Conclusion

The findings are consistent with prior studies involving other health behaviors such as attendance at primary care and medication adherence. Results suggest that interventions that reduce delay discounting may help promote regular interdental cleaning, and that delay discounting is a more robust predictor of health behaviors than probability discounting. In addition, interdental cleaning appears to be a reasonable target behavior for evaluating potentially generalizable behavioral health interventions. Thus, interventions that are successful in promoting oral health behaviors should be considered as candidates for evaluation in other health behavior domains.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12903-022-02328-6.

Sharing data to better understand one of the world's most significant shared experiences: data resource profile of the longitudinal COVID-19 psychological research consortium (C19PRC) study

This paper serves to alert IJPDS readers to the availability of a major new longitudinal survey data resource, the COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium (C19PRC) Study, which is being released for secondary use via the Open Science Framework. The C19PRC Study is a rich and detailed dataset that provides a convenient and valuable foundation from which to study the social, political, and health status of European adults during an unprecedented time of change as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit. Here, we provide an overview of the C19PRC Study design, with the purpose of stimulating interest about the study among social scientists and maximising use of this resource.

Individuals with adverse childhood experiences explore less and underweight reward feedback

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are extreme stressors that lead to negative psychosocial outcomes in adulthood. Nonhuman animals explore less after exposure to early stress. Therefore, in this preregistered study, we hypothesized that reduced exploration following ACEs would also be evident in human adults. Further, we predicted that adults with ACEs, in a foraging task, would adopt a decision-making policy that relies on the most-recent reward feedback, a rational strategy for unstable environments. We analyzed data from 145 adult participants, 47 with four or more ACEs and 98 with fewer than four ACEs. In the foraging task, participants evaluated the trade-off between exploiting a known patch with diminishing rewards and exploring a novel one with a fresh distribution of rewards. Using computational modeling, we quantified the degree to which participants' decisions weighted recent feedback. As predicted, participants with ACEs explored less. However, contrary to our hypothesis, they underweighted recent feedback. These unexpected findings indicate that early adversity may dampen reward sensitivity. Our results may help to identify cognitive mechanisms that link childhood trauma to the onset of psychopathology.

OUP accepted manuscript

The Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) and measures to curb it created population-level changes in male-dominant impulsive and risky behaviors such as violent crimes and gambling. One possible explanation for this is that the pandemic has been stressful, and males, more so than females, tend to respond to stress by altering their focus on immediate versus delayed rewards, as reflected in their delay discounting rates. Delay discounting rates from healthy undergraduate students were collected twice during the pandemic. Discounting rates of males (n=190) but not of females (n=493) increased during the pandemic. Using machine learning, we show that prepandemic functional connectome predict increased discounting rates in males (n=88). Moreover, considering that delay discounting is associated with multiple psychiatric disorders, we found the same neural pattern that predicted increased discounting rates in this study, in secondary datasets of patients with major depression and schizophrenia. The findings point to sex-based differences in maladaptive delay discounting under real-world stress events, and to connectome-based neuromarkers of such effects. They can explain why there was a population-level increase in several impulsive and risky behaviors during the pandemic and point to intriguing questions about the shared underlying mechanisms of stress responses, psychiatric disorders and delay discounting.

Effects of Individual Discount Rate and Uncertainty Perception on Compliance with Containment Measures during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Anti-contagion measures restricting individual freedom, such as social distancing and wearing a mask, are crucial to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Decision-making patterns and attitudes about uncertainty can highly influence the adherence to these restrictive measures. Here we investigated the relationship between risky behavior and individual preferences for immediate vs. delayed reward, as indexed by temporal discounting (TD), as well as the association between these measures and confidence in the future, perceived risk and confidence in the containment measures. These measures were collected through an online survey administered on 353 participants at the end of the more restrictive phase of the first Italian lockdown. The results showed an unexpected inverse relationship between the individual pattern of choice preferences and risky behavior, with an overall greater adherence to containment measures in more discounter participants. These findings were interpreted in terms of a reframing process in which behaviors aimed at protecting oneself from contagion turn into immediate gains rather than losses. Interestingly, an excessive confidence in a better future was correlated with a higher tendency to assume risky behavior, thereby highlighting the downside of an overly and blindly optimistic view.