IMMEDIACY AND CERTAINTY IN INTERTEMPORAL CHOICE

Time delay and uncertainty are deeply interrelated though the nature o f the interaction between these two constructs remains equivocal. The immediacy and the certainty effects provide an easy access to study th e relationship between time delay and uncertainty. Three experiments a re described which examine the effect of uncertainty on the immediacy effect and the effect of time delay on the certainty effect. We also p resent analytical. arguments that lead to the tentative conclusion tha t immediacy is more likely to be a derivative of certainty than the re verse. It is further proposed that laboratory experiments may undermin e the importance of uncertainty underlying time delays as demonstrated in experiment 4. Theoretical and methodological intricacies associate d with separating uncertainty and time delay are discussed. (C) 1995 A cademic Press, Inc.