Willingness to wait outperforms delay discounting in predicting drinking severity

Alcohol misuse ranks among the leading causes of preventable death worldwide. Therefore, discovering measures that can predict hazardous drinking is critical. The delay discounting paradigm—which assesses relative preference for immediate rewards over larger, later rewards—has frequently been used as a proxy for impulsive choice, but it does not capture how long someone is willing to wait for delayed rewards when the arrival time is uncertain. In contrast, a newer willingness-to-wait task measures how long someone is willing to wait for a delayed reward of uncertain timing before giving up. We hypothesized that performance in this willingness-to-wait task would be associated with drinking severity and that this task may even outperform delay discounting as a predictor of drinking severity. We pooled data from multiple studies of mostly college-aged adult participants. Drinking severity was assessed with the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. Willingness to wait under temporal uncertainty, but not delay discounting, was associated with severity of alcohol problems among participants who drank (n = 212). Individuals engaging in hazardous drinking were less willing to wait for rewards when delays were unknown than were individuals with low-risk drinking habits. Thus, willingness to wait under temporal uncertainty may be an important predictor of problematic drinking.