The sign effect in temporal discounting does not require the hippocampus

Abstract

When considering future outcomes, humans tend to discount gains more than losses. This phenomenon, referred to as the temporal discounting sign effect, is thought to result from the greater anticipated emotional impact of waiting for a negative outcome (dread) compared to waiting for a positive outcome (mixture of savoring and impatience). The impact of such anticipatory emotions has been proposed to rely on episodic future thinking. We evaluated this proposal by examining the presence and magnitude of a sign effect in the intertemporal decisions of individuals with hippocampal amnesia, who are severely impaired in their ability to engage in episodic mental simulation, and by comparing their patterns of choices to those of healthy controls. We also measured loss aversion, the tendency to assign greater value to losses compared to equivalent gains, to verify that any reduction in the sign effect in the hippocampal lesion group could not be explained by a group difference in loss aversion. Results showed that participants with hippocampal amnesia exhibited a sign effect, with less discounting of monetary losses compared to gains, that was similar in magnitude to that of controls. Loss aversion, albeit greater in the hippocampal compared to the control group, did not account for the sign effect. These results indicate that the sign effect does not depend on the integrity of hippocampally mediated episodic processes. They suggest instead that the impact of anticipatory emotions can be factored into decisions via semantic future thinking, drawing on non-contextual knowledge about oneself.