3. How do individuals make intertemporal decisions?

- Socio-Demographic Factors: Discount rates are associated with

a number of fundamental socio-demographic factors. One important factor is
age. Results of studies of sex differences in temporal discounting are not
consistent either. Large-scale, population-representative studies are needed in
order to dissect contributions of different socio-economic as well as other
individual differences variables to temporal discounting.

- Personality Traits: Impulsive decision making has been associated

with a broad range of personality traits for a long time. Personality, defined as
characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, is a key individual
differences variable in psychology.

- Future-Oriented Cognitive Styles and Imagery:

Another important domain of individual differences concerns future-oriented
cognitive styles and abilities, i.e., general temporal or mental imagery, which
is defined as the ability to form and experience mental representations of
stimuli without actually perceiving them.

- Inhibitory Control: Inhibitory control refers to the ability to

withhold or stop responses or thoughts that are unwanted in a given context.
Inhibitory control is a core dimension of cognitive control. Cognitive control,
or executive function, refers to effortful, general-purpose control mechanisms
that dynamically regulate thoughts and behaviors by modulating cognitive
sub-processes. Cognitive control is required when automatic or impulsive
responses have to be overridden. This ability is of relevance to mental and
physical health, success in education, and other real-life outcomes. Inhibitory
control itself is heterogeneous, but has been suggested to include response
inhibition, resistance to distractor interference, and resistance to proactive
interference from irrelevant memories

- Intelligence:
- Brain Structure and Function: Associations of temporal
discounting with brain structure and function may to some extent explain
links between individual differences in temporal discounting and other
psychological variables. In this section, we review neuroimaging evidence that
relates variation in brain structure, activity, and connectivity patterns with
individual differences in temporal discounting. It is important to note that our
aim is not to thoroughly review the neural underpinnings of temporal
discounting

- Molecular Genetics: Converging evidence from and human studies

shows that temporal discounting is moderately yet significantly heritable.
Building on this finding, several genetic polymorphisms have been associated
with temporal discounting.