If you had a choice between receiving $1,000 right now or $4,000 ten years from now, which would you pick? Psychologists use the term “delay discounting” to describe our inability to resist the temptation of a smaller immediate reward in lieu of receiving a larger reward at a later date. Discounting future rewards too much is a form of impulsivity, and an important way in which we can neglect to exert self-control.
Previous research suggests that higher intelligence is related to better self-control, but the reasons for this link are unknown. Psychologists Noah A. Shamosh and Jeremy R. Gray, from Yale University, and their colleagues, were interested in testing the idea that certain brain regions supporting short-term memory play a critical role in this relationship.
"It has been known for some time that intelligence and self-control are related, but we didn't know why. Our study implicates the function of a specific brain structure, the anterior prefrontal cortex, which is one of the last brain structures to fully mature,” said Dr. Shamosh.
In this study, 103 healthy adults were presented with a delay discounting task to assess self-control: a series of hypothetical choices where they had to choose between two financial rewards, a smaller one which they would receive immediately or another, larger reward which would be received at a later time. The participants then underwent a variety of tests of intelligence and short term memory. On another day, subjects’ brain activity was measured using fMRI, while they performed additional short-term memory tasks.
The results show that participants with the greatest activation in the brain region known as the anterior prefrontal cortex also scored the highest on intelligence tests and exhibited the best self-control during the financial reward test. This was the only brain region to show this relation. The results appear in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Previous studies have shown that the anterior prefrontal cortex plays a role in integrating a variety of information. The authors suggest that greater activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex helps people not only to manage complex problems, resulting in higher intelligence, but also aids in dealing with simultaneous goals, leading to better self-control.
A smarter society is a society where people will have more self control and pursue longer term goals. The declining cost of DNA sequencing will soon bring us many of the genetic alleles that cause different levels of capability in the anterior prefrontal cortex. Then individuals will start considering genetic profiles and likely offspring intelligence when choosing mates. Also, in vitro fertilization (IVF) with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PIGD or PGD) will become popular among those who recognize the importance of making their offspring as smart as possible.
If a smarter person has a more powerful anterior prefrontal cortex which allows the person to control their impulse to act on immediate desires then does a smarter person have more free will?
By Randall Parker at 2008 September 09 11:07 PM Brain Economics | TrackBackI remember when I was a kid in the eighties I saved all of my allowance for years to buy a computer. Then when I finally had enough money, my parents took my savings away from me and spent it. It doesn't pay to postpone gratification for too long.
The correlation can't be completely solid. I know plenty of smart people with poor self-control... The specific example is interesting when applied to myself. I'm a smart person with poor self-control generally, but I have great self-control financially.
Whale, did you remind them that you would be choosing their nursing home?
The sad truth is that in the modern world financial success has little to do with either IQ or ability to delay gratification.
I know quite a few people who made their millions (and in one case, a billion or so) by simply being in the right place at the right time; by joining the right startup, by having friends or relatives in high places, by sleeping with the right guy, by being ruthless in backstabbing and brownnosing. None of them are outstandingly smart (and few are rather dull) - and some are going now through repeated business failures in vain attempts to prove to themselves that their fortune wasn't a fluke.
So far my observations match Robert X Cringley's "Accidental Empires" pretty well.
Thanks Randall.
This is probably the mechanism behind the tight correlation between IQ and future time orientation. So pleiotropy is why whites and Asians have high IQ's even though it is not obvious that farming has higher intelligence elasticity than hunting and gathering. Selection for work now for a reward later, like planting, weeding, and storing food for winter is automatically selection for intelligence.