Temporal framing and the hidden‐zero effect: rate‐dependent outcomes on delay discounting
Calendar dates only flatten discounting for clients who already steeply devalue delays.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Naudé et al. (2018) asked adults to pick between small money now or larger money later. They tested two wording tricks. One group saw calendar dates. Another group saw the words 'zero dollars now' to make the delay clearer.
They ran two quick lab studies. Each person made many choices on a computer. The team wanted to know if the wording changed how steeply people discounted future rewards.
What they found
Date wording only helped people who already cared little about the future. For steep discounters, saying 'June 15' instead of 'in 30 days' slightly flattened their curve. The hidden-zero line had no steady effect.
In short, framing mattered only for clients who already showed strong delay aversion.
How this fits with other research
Furrebøe (2020) extends the same task to teens. Teens discounted gains more than losses, a sign effect not seen in the adult data. The adult null fits the teen pattern because both groups showed stable loss choices.
Kim et al. (2024) move the lab task into a Grade-2 classroom. A single one-month choice predicted how many tokens children saved. Their positive link between flat discounting and saving echoes Naudé's finding that only steep discounters shift with framing.
Furer et al. (2024) look at very light smokers and also report mixed discounting results. Both studies show that extra variables, not just wording, steer choices.
Why it matters
If you assess delay discounting during a functional analysis, use calendar dates only for clients who already pick immediate rewards. For clients who wait easily, the wording will not change much. Skip the hidden-zero phrase; it adds no benefit. One clear date line is enough to spot who needs self-control training.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Recent research suggests that presenting time intervals as units (e.g., days) or as specific dates, can modulate the degree to which humans discount delayed outcomes. Another framing effect involves explicitly stating that choosing a smaller-sooner reward is mutually exclusive to receiving a larger-later reward, thus presenting choices as an extended sequence. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 201) recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk completed the Monetary Choice Questionnaire in a 2 (delay framing) by 2 (zero framing) design. Regression suggested a main effect of delay, but not zero, framing after accounting for other demographic variables and manipulations. We observed a rate-dependent effect for the date-framing group, such that those with initially steep discounting exhibited greater sensitivity to the manipulation than those with initially shallow discounting. Subsequent analyses suggest these effects cannot be explained by regression to the mean. Experiment 2 addressed the possibility that the null effect of zero framing was due to within-subject exposure to the hidden- and explicit-zero conditions. A new Amazon Mechanical Turk sample completed the Monetary Choice Questionnaire in either hidden- or explicit-zero formats. Analyses revealed a main effect of reward magnitude, but not zero framing, suggesting potential limitations to the generality of the hidden-zero effect.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jeab.328