Cerebrate Weekly: Why do we Procrastinate? The Economics of Instant Gratification
Procrastination is a behavior that we all dislike, yet we find ourselves falling victim to it most of the time. In fact, it has been a timeless struggle for humanity as long as we have existed.
The ancient Greeks referred to this behavior of acting against one’s better judgment as Akrasia. Akrasia is essentially a lack of self-control.
But why do we struggle with it ? Well behavioral psychology research reveals that the procrastination has to do with one uniquely human problem that is with how we think about the future, a phenomenon called Affective forecasting or Hedonic Forecasting.
Affective or Hedonic Forecasting: Present Self vs Future Self
The term Affective forecasting was coined by psychologists Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert. It refers to the human behavior of predicting our future emotional states.
According to Daniel Gilbert, humans are the only species that think meaningfully about the future. While this ability has resulted in many positive contributions, however the projection bias in our prediction often leads to procrastination.
How does affective forecasting impact procrastination?
In their research on affective forecasting, Wilson and Gilbert discovered that people have difficulty accurately predicting what will make them happy and tend to be influenced by their present emotions when making decisions.
For example we feel motivated and happy to set long term goals for our future self, however when it comes to taking action to achieve the goals, the present self tends to prioritize instant gratification over long-term payoffs.
Ontologically, this sense of hastiness and lack of patience is inherent to being human as informed to us in the final testament.
Humankind is made of haste. I will soon show you My signs, so do not ask Me to hasten them.
— Quran 21:37
Delay Discounting: The Science of Procrastination
To analyze the impact of Procrastination, we need to look through the lenses of an economist. Economist call this delay discounting: the longer you have to wait for a reward, the less it is worth to you.
Imagine you have the choice between receiving $100 today or $150 one month from now. Delay discounting suggests that many people would prefer to take the $100 today because they place a higher value on immediate rewards, even though waiting for a month would yield a larger reward.
Delay discounting is a broad concept that encompasses various models and theories of how individuals make choices involving time and rewards.
In the context of Behavioral economics, a type of manifestation of delay discounting is that a person’s preferences or choices change over time in a way that is not rational or consistent known as time inconsistency.
Let’s say you set a New Year’s resolution to save money for retirement and create a budget to achieve this goal. However, as the months pass, you find yourself consistently overspending and dipping into your retirement savings because your preferences have changed over time. You regret not sticking to your initial plan.
Another interesting model is called Hyperbolic discounting, It suggests that individuals exhibit a particular pattern of time inconsistency in which they heavily discount the value of future rewards when making decisions in the short term but become more patient as the time to receive the reward approaches.
It’s characterized by a hyperbolic curve where the discounting rate is steeper for immediate rewards compared to delayed rewards.
Here’s an example that demonstrates the hyperbolic nature of discounting:
Imagine someone is offered a choice between two rewards: $100 today or $150 one year from today
At the moment of decision-making, they might heavily favor taking the $100 today because it’s an immediate reward. However, if you ask them again in six months, when the $150 reward is closer in time (only six months away), their preference might shift, and they might be more inclined to wait for the $150.
✍🏼Quote of the Week
🧠Food for Thought
Take a moment to reflect on the future rewards that you sacrifice every time you succumb to temptation or procrastination. What is the immediate gratification you experience by giving in? And what is the long-term cost of your actions? Is this exchange fair?
📖Read and Rise
James Clear has written an article on the impact bias titled The Impact Bias: How to Be Happy When Everything Goes Wrong. The article discusses the work of Dan Gilbert, a social psychologist at Harvard University. Gilbert’s best-selling book, Stumbling on Happiness, explores the ways in which we often misjudge how situations will affect our happiness and offers some counterintuitive insights on how to find happiness.
🧭Weekly Compass
📚 Book Summary: Dopamine Detox by Thibaut Mueriss. This book explains the role of the Neurotransmitter “Dopamine” in our behavior & how its functioning has been hijacked in modern world.
📝 Article: Pavlov’s Experiment: The Reason Why You Are Distracted. In this article Omer Mohammed revisits the Pavlov’s Experiment & explains how environments trigger our behaviors.
🛠Tools for Thought
Bionic Reader App: Bionic Reading is a new method facilitating the reading process by guiding the eyes through text with artificial fixation points. Bionic Reader app is best in the business right offering this feature.