Time-Preference Tests Fail to Predict Behavior Related to Self-control

According to theory, choices relating to patience and self-control in domains as varied as drug use and retirement saving are driven by generalized preferences about delayed rewards. Past research has shown that measurements of these time preferences are associated with these choices. Research has also attempted to examine how well such measurements can predict choices, but only with inappropriate analytical methods. Moreover, it is not clear which of the many kinds of time-preference tests that have been proposed are most useful for prediction, and a theoretically important aspect of time preferences, nonstationarity, has been neglected in measurement. In Study 1, we examined three approaches to measuring time preferences with 181 users of Mechanical Turk. Retest reliability, for both immediate and 1-month intervals, was decent, as was convergent validity between tests, and association was similar to previous results, but predictive accuracy for 10 criterion variables (e.g., tobacco use) was approximately nil. In Study 2, we examined one other approach to measuring time preferences, and 40 criterion variables, using 7,127 participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. Time preferences were significantly related to criterion variables, but predictive accuracy was again poor. Our findings imply serious problems for using time-preference tests to predict real-world decisions. The results of Study 1 further suggest there is little value in measuring nonstationarity separately from patience.