Regret now, take it now: On the role of experienced regret on intertemporal choice

We present an experiment designed to test whether experienced regret and rejoicing evoked in a risk choice have an impact on subsequent intertemporal choice. We found that regret and rejoicing experienced prior to an intertemporal choice influenced considerably the way people relate to future: when regret was experienced participants preferred not to wait, whereas when rejoicing was experienced, participants were willing to wait longer. We show that in the framework of the discounted utility model experienced regret lowered and experienced rejoicing increased the discount factor. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.