Does anyone know some good psychology papers on present bias that discusses the psychological mechanisms underlying this bias?
I can only seem to find papers by economist and they tend to give a quite formal and mathematical explanation of the subject. I'm looking for an in depth explanation of the psychology behind present bias.
I think the present bias is a result of the immediate gratification tendency that we as humans have. The following extracts are from the book Smart Change: Break the habits that hold you back and form the habits of success by Art Markman
One of the most difficult things for people (and other animals for that matter) is to pass up something desirable right now in favor of something else in the future. A piece of cake now has a stronger pull on our actions than having a beach-ready body by next summer. An afternoon playing video games feels like a better way to spend an afternoon than studying for an exam that won’t happen for another week. Checking a few emails at work feels more productive than putting in effort on a big long-term project that won’t be finished for months. You’re wired to want to do what feels good in the short term.
A beautiful experimental method for looking at the difficulty of overcoming temptations was developed by Walter Mischel in the late 1950s to study how children deal with temptation. In his studies, an experimenter asked four-year-old children to sit in a room and showed them a small tempting object like a marshmallow or a cookie. Then the experimenter placed the object in front of the child next to a bell and said that he had to leave the room for a while. If the child was able to wait until the experimenter got back, then the child would get a larger reward (like two marshmallows or cookies). However, the child could ring the bell at any time and just take what was on the plate. If the child was able to wait fifteen minutes, then the experimenter would come back in the room and give the child the bigger reward.
In a typical experiment, the average child was able to go only about ten minutes before ringing the bell. Factored into that average are the many children who rang the bell soon after the experimenter left the room and others who were able to wait the full fifteen minutes. Even for those children who are successful at waiting, it can be a difficult experience. In fact, there are a number of popular videos on YouTube of children in these experiments agonizing over the marshmallows in front of them. It is funny to see the children struggle to wait for the bigger reward. But the videos also illustrate how hard it can be to overcome temptation.
In the above experiment although the future benefits are clearly better (two instead of one marshmallow), the now is weighted more.
