The Effect of Emotions on Delay Discounting: The Moderating Role of Field Cognitive Styles

Background: From time to time in life, people have to weigh losses and gains that occur at different points in time, a process called intertemporal choice. When faced with intertemporal choices, people's subjective value assessments of costs and benefits decrease over time, which is the phenomenon of delay discounting. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an individual's emotion and field cognitive styles on individual delay discounting. Method: College student from a university in Shandong were recruited to conduct the Embedded Figure Test. From these students, field-independent and field-dependent individuals were classified to complete the delay discounting task. Results: Delay discounting was larger for field-dependent individuals than for field-independent individuals; individuals' delay discounting was reduced in the positive emotion state compared to the negative emotion state. Importantly, for field-independent individuals, they had comparable delay discounting between the positive and negative emotion state. Whereas for field-dependent individuals, the delay discounting is larger in the negative emotion state than positive emotion state. Conclusions: Field cognitive styles modulate the emotion effect on individuals' delay discounting. Field-dependent individuals are more likely to choose immediate small rewards in the negative emotion state and delayed large rewards in the positive emotion state. Field-independent individuals have similar probabilities of choosing the rewards across both emotion state.