The study looked at how people make choices about things that have benefits and costs over time. They developed a new way to figure out how people value things in the future compared to now. They found that people tend to discount future rewards at a constant rate, rather than at a decreasing rate like some theories suggest. This means that people generally value things in the future less than things in the present, but at a consistent rate. The findings suggest that previous studies may have been influenced by factors like uncertainty and transaction costs, leading to different results.