Abstract
Despite real-world implications, the pattern of delay discounting in alcohol users when the commodities now and later differ has not been well-characterized. In this study, 60 participants on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk completed the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT) to assess severity of use and completed four delay discounting tasks between hypothetical, equivalent amounts of alcohol and money available at five delays. The tasks included two cross-commodity (alcohol now-money later and money now-alcohol later) and two same-commodity (money now-money later and alcohol now-alcohol later) conditions. Delay discounting was significantly associated with clinical cutoffs of the AUDIT for both of the cross-commodity conditions but not for either of the same-commodity delay discounting tasks. The cross-commodity discounting conditions were related to severity of use wherein heavy users discounted future alcohol less and future money more. The change in direction of the discounting effect was dependent on the commodity that was distally available suggesting a distinctive pattern of discounting across commodities when comparing light and heavy alcohol users.
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This study was funded by NIAAA R01AA021529 and LNM’s time was funded by NIAAA F31AA024368.
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LNM, LMP, WKB have no conflicts of interest to report.
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All procedure performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Moody, L.N., Tegge, A.N. & Bickel, W.K. Cross-Commodity Delay Discounting of Alcohol and Money in Alcohol Users. Psychol Rec 67, 285–292 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-017-0245-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-017-0245-0