Delay Discounting of Self-Determined and Experimenter-Determined Commodities.

Self determination has long been a concept of great interest to psychologists. For instance, self determination was a critical concept in the person-centered therapy and theory of personality that was forwarded by Carl Rogers (Patterson & Joseph, 2007). More recently, self-determination theory has emerged (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2008) as a general theory of human behavior and motivation that has been applied in a wide variety of situations (e.g., education, Kaufman & Dodge, 2009; worker satisfaction & productivity, Kuvaas, 2009). The common theme related to self determination is that it is a good thing; people are happier, more motivated, and more productive when they can exercise self determination than when they cannot. Although behavioral psychologists have historically eschewed internal or personality variables as explanations for behavior, they too have explored the idea that situations that involve self determination are functionally different than situations that do not involve self determination. For instance, Graff, Libby, and Green (1998) found that participant-selected reinforcers maintained higher rates of free-operant responding, and produced less challenging behaviors, than did experimenter-selected reinforcers in two male participants with severe developmental disabilities. Geckeler, Libby, Graff, and Ahearn (2000) failed to replicate this effect on free-operant responding in three boys with Autism, but did find that when participant-and experimenter-selected reinforcers were available in a concurrent-choice procedure, all three boys showed a response preference for the alternative that allowed them to choose their own reinforcer. These results replicated those of a previous study (i.e., effect of self-determined choice only in the concurrent-schedule situation; Graff & Libby, 1999), which had studied four boys with either developmental disabilities or attention-deficit disorder. More recently, Tiger, Hanley, and Hernandez (2006) studied the effect of reinforcer choice on the behavior of preschool children. Results indicated that five of the six children showed an initial preference for choosing their own reinforcer, although this preference did not persist throughout the entire condition for several of the children. Tiger et al.'s fourth study demonstrated that the children continued to choose the reinforcer-choice option despite the fact that the response requirement for doing so was higher than the no-choice reinforcer option. Overall, these studies support the idea that an outcome that allows the individual to determine his/her own reinforcing consequences can be a more effective or preferred reinforcer than the identical outcome that is not chosen by the individual. Determining whether outcome choice is indeed a more powerful reinforcing consequence than a predetermined outcome has a number of potential implications, especially if that outcome can be demonstrated in an adult sample. For instance, the implication for individuals in the field of marketing would be that offering potential customers a self-chosen prize for visiting a business or website might be a more effective promotion than simply offering a predetermined prize. Instructors might find that students' work improves if their efforts result in a self-chosen outcome rather than an instructor-chosen outcome. Researchers who employ human participants in laboratory studies with the incentive of winning a prize (e.g., a gift card) for good performance may find improved performance if participants are offered a self-determined reward rather than an experimenter-chose one. The study of delay discount affords one measure of the value of an outcome or commodity. Delay discounting occurs when the value of an outcome is devalued because it is delayed in time. For instance, if someone owed you $100 but was not going to be able to pay you for a month, you might accept $95 immediately rather than waiting a month for the full amount. …