ReviewPsychological medicine2021
The problems with delay discounting: a critical review of current practices and clinical applications.
Review in Psychological medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 90 citations in OpenAlex.
- Delay discounting and anxiety: a systematic review on current evidence for clinical and non-clinical population.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Imagining the future can shape the present: A systematic review of the impact of episodic future thinking on substance use outcomes.Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors · 2024Pooled it
- Deprivation Has Inconsistent Effects on Delay Discounting: A Review.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- Less systematic decision-making during delay discounting, but not discounting rate, is robustly linked to psychopathology.Journal of psychopathology and clinical science · 2026Article
- Domain-specific discounting of health and money: implications for health technology assessment.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2026Article
- Associations Between Steep Delay Discounting and Punishment Learning.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Episodic future thinking modulates delay discounting in individuals with problematic substance use: a narrative review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Review
- A systematic review and meta-analysis of the impact of environmental disadvantage on youth delayed reward discounting.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Impulsive Decision Reduction Training (IDRT) reduces binge drinking and increases future orientation in young adult binge drinkers.Addictive behaviors · 2025Article
- Comparing intertemporal decision-making models: Predictions and applications in lifespan through subjective time perception.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2025Article
- Choosing well: A narrative review on chronic pain and decision-making.The journal of pain · 2025Review
- Comparing likelihood-based and likelihood-free approaches to fitting and comparing models of intertemporal choice.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
- Sex and Genetic Differences in Behavioral Engagement of Crossed High Alcohol-Preferring and Low Alcohol-Preferring Mice.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2025Article
- Delay Discounting and Risk Tolerance in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Results From the Global OCD Study.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
- Computational analysis of 100 K choice dilemmas: Decision attributes, trade-off structures, and model-based prediction.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Applications of Behavioral Economics and Neuroeconomics in Mental Health.Iranian journal of psychiatry · 2025Review
- Associations between PTSD and temporal discounting: The role of future thinking.Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry · 2024Article
- Delay discounting of rewards and losses, alcohol use, and the influence of socioeconomic factors: A cross-sectional online study in frequent drinkers.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2024Article
- Ecological momentary assessment of delay discounting, reward valuation, and craving in very light cigarette users.Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior · 2024Article
- Genome-wide association study of delay discounting in Heterogeneous Stock rats.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Delay discounting paradigms have gained widespread popularity across clinical research. Given the prevalence in the field, researchers have set lofty expectations for the importance of delay discounting as a key transdiagnostic process and a 'core' process underlying specific domains of dysfunction (e.g. addiction). We believe delay discounting has been prematurely reified as, in and of itself, a core process underlying psychological dysfunction, despite significant concerns with the construct validity of discounting rates. Specifically, high delay discounting rates are only modestly related to measures of psychological dysfunction and therefore are not 'core' to these more complex behavioral problems. Furthermore, discounting rates do not appear to be specifically related to any disorder(s) or dimension(s) of psychopathology. This raises fundamental concerns about the utility of discounting, if the measure is only loosely associated with most forms of psychopathology. This stands in striking contrast to claims that discounting can serve as a 'marker' for specific disorders, despite never demonstrating adequate sensitivity or specificity for any disorder that we are aware of. Finally, empirical evidence does not support the generalizability of discounting rates to other decisions made either in the lab or in the real-world, and therefore discounting rates cannot and should not serve as a summary measure of an individual's decision-making patterns. We provide recommendations for improving future delay discounting research, but also strongly encourage researchers to consider whether the empirical evidence supports the field's hyper-focus on discounting.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.