People and other organisms generally prefer imminent goods over more
distal future goods. Discounting the future involves responses to cues that predict tradeoffs between imminent and distal futures, and varies across species, sexes, life stages, and circumstances. We employ the evolutionary framework of reproductive effort scheduling pioneered by G.C. Williams to develop hypotheses about how and when people and other
creatures modulate the extent to which they discount the future,
hypotheses that we test in both experiments and archival research.
Wilson M, Daly M (2006) Are juvenile offenders extreme future discounters? Psychological Science 17: 989-994.
Daly M, Wilson M (2005) Carpe
Diem: Adaptation and devaluing the future. The Quarterly Review
of Biology 80: 55-61.
Wilson M, Daly M (2004) Do pretty women inspire men to discount the
future? Biology Letters (Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B; Suppl. 271: S177-S179.
