Stress, Intertemporal Choice, and Mitigation Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Delayed gratification is an important focus of research, given its potential relationship to forms of behavior, such as savings, susceptibility to addiction, and pro-social behaviors. The COVID-19 pandemic may be one of the most consequential recent examples of this phenomenon, with people’s willingness to delay gratification affecting their willingness to socially distance themselves. COVID-19 also provides a naturalistic context by which to evaluate the ecological validity of delayed gratification. This article outlines four large-scale online experiments (total N =12, 906) where we ask participants to perform Money Earlier or Later (MEL) decisions (e.g., $5 today vs. $10 tomorrow) and to also report stress measures and pandemic mitigation behaviors. We found that stress increases impulsivity and that less stressed and more patient individuals socially distanced more throughout the pandemic.