Study reveals humans discount past outcomes similarly to future, impacting impulsive behaviors.
Drug use and addiction are linked to impulsiveness. A study looked at how people value outcomes from the past compared to the future. They found that people discount past outcomes in a similar way to future outcomes. This means that we tend to value things less the further back in time they happened. The study suggests that understanding how we discount past events could help in studying impulsive behaviors like drug addiction.