Balderdash
Karen calls this "unsurprising," and I suppose I understand what everyone’s getting at — having patience is smart — but the "study" as briefly presented is utter nonsense.
It seems that a desire to be satisfied right now is linked with lower
intelligence. When 1,000 people in Germany were given the choice of
receiving 100 euros today or 150 euros a year from now, those with a
higher IQ chose to wait for the higher return. It’s the first time
research has shown a relationship between intelligence and patience. Source: University of Bonn, July 2007
I suspect it’s just that the smart people knew an exercise in masturbation when they heard it, and picked the answer most likely to to arouse pleasure in the sponsors. A hundred euros is an insignificant amount of money (around $140), I have no idea whether a promise will be kept a year from now, so I’ll take the 100 euro now, please, if you’re offering.
But suppose it’s 100,000 euros verses nothing now, and a promise for 150,000 in a year. Now the uncertainty of the promise being kept is even more prescient (and if you’re not factoring that in you’re not smart). That’s enough right there to opt for the here and now, disregarding even then possibility that you may not even be alive in a year. Moreover, if you’re an entrepreneur, or ever had inklings of becoming one, an ROI of many hundreds of even thousands of percent is an absolute necessity for real success, and a 50% annual return is simply not worth a year’s delay.
Guess I’m just a dummy.
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Maybe it is really the smart people who know that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
Hmmm, that's interesting. A quick perusal of "time preference" at Wikipedia leads me to think it's very similar to an economic or financial concept I've used for years in negotiating financial settlements: time value of money.
Not entirely so, of course, and time preference appears to have some merit (again: quick perusal) as a study, but I've always thought it somewhat foolish (according to my own values) to "save for retirement" or "the future" which is the underlying current I sense in just about everything economic or financial I get over at Lew Rockwell or De Coster. I live under the (I think warranted) assumption that here in America I'm going to have a somewhat equal mix of bad and good fortune, and what I need to do is stay in the game, such that I can ride good fortunes for all they're worth. As such, I don't worry inordinately about "losing it all," because too much focus on that will keep me from seizing opportunities that always present with some risk (otherwise they aren't typical opportunities).
I understand this (time preference) seems to focus more on consumption vs. saving for the future, whereas, my focus is more on risk taking now vs. saving for the future, but I can say for myself that the sort of risks I take wouldn't be much fun at all if I wasn't living in a pretty large way consumption wise.
One thing to remember about DeCoster is that she's a fan of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and so she'll jump on board anything that even vaguely or illogically supports his "time preference" ideas (don't need to click through to know what her angle is). She's frankly not too bright.
A real study would involve offering people a flat-out choice of a 100-euro bill now or a 150 euro IOU (payable in 1 year).