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Choice History Bias in Intertemporal Choice

Human decision making is prone to many biases that either result from properties of the actual decision or from properties of the decision environment. We investigated the influence of the choice history on the actual decision in the domain of intertemporal choice, known as choice history bias from perceptual decision making. Over a series of three experiments, we demonstrate that the choice history bias also operates in intertemporal choice, but only under specific circumstances. We identified the inter-trial interval to be a determinant of the bias. Our results corroborate recent findings investigating path-dependence of perceptual and preferential decisions, and consolidate the overall mechanistic interpretation that the choice history bias arises due to residual activity in the neural system. Hence, our study bears two implications:First, models of intertemporal choice need to consider the dependency of choices across trials; second, the study of intertemporal choices empirically asks for considering this path-dependence to avoid biased conclusions about individual choices.