Standard theories of decision-making involving delayed outcomes predict that people should defer a punishment, whilst advancing a reward. In some cases, such as pain, people seem to prefer to expedite punishment, implying that its anticipation carries a cost, often conceptualized as 'dread'. Despite empirical support for the existence of dread, whether and how it depends on prospective delay is...

What is patience? Humans and other animals often make decisions that trade off present and future benefits. Should a monkey eat an unripe fruit or wait for it to ripen? Should I purchase the iPhone at its debut or wait for the price to drop in a few months? In these dilemmas, large gains often require long waits, so decision makers must choose between a smaller, sooner reward and a larger, late...

People show higher sensitivity to dread risks, rare events that kill many people at once, compared with continuous risks, relatively frequent events that kill many people over a longer period of time. The different reaction to dread risks is often considered a bias: If the continuous risk causes the same number of fatalities, it should not be perceived as less dreadful. We test the hypothesis t...

the crises sometimes cause a man(zawj) to become absent so that no news have been received from him. shiite and sunnite religions have two opinions about the situation of the wife(zawjah) of the continuously absent person: patience until his life or death becomes clear, and waiting four months and ten days(ieddeh of death) after waiting for a determined period. shiite jurists, in condition that...

This paper introduces wealth-dependent time preference into a simple model of endogenous growth. The model generates adjustment dynamics in line with the historical facts on savings and economic growth in Europe from the High Middle Ages to today. Along a virtuous cycle of development more wealth leads to more patience, which leads to more savings and even higher wealth. Savings rates and incom...