Delay discounting is the tendency for people to prefer a small, instant reward over a larger, delayed reward. It can be measured quite readily in children using tests designed to make them wait for a treat. For some children, you could offer 10 treats 10 minutes from now, and they would prefer to eat the one treat in front of them than wait 10 whole minutes for a treat windfall. That’s an example of very high delay discounting.

“[D]elay discounting is a key behavioral mechanism underlying substance use disorder,” write researchers from Johns Hopkins University in an article on delay discounting and cannabis use disorder (CUD). In a systematic review and meta-analysis funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the researchers examined 27 studies involving almost 25,000 participants.

Using “meta-regression analysis to determine the omnibus correlation” between cannabis abuse and delay discounting, the review found “a small but omnibus effect in which greater cannabis use frequency or severity was associated with greater discounting.”

A much broader review of delay discounting was conducted by a group of addiction researchers at the University of Kansas. They looked at 78 studies involving a variety of behavioral addictions. The results were mixed, however, due in part to the small number of studies examining delay discounting and exercise addiction or shopping addiction.

The best the Kansas researchers could come up with is that there is a strong, statistically significant correlation between gambling addiction and high delay discounting. Smaller relationships were noted between high delay discounting and smartphone addiction, and high discounting and eating addiction.

In a nuanced conclusion, the researchers speculate that assessments for gambling addiction are better at revealing delay discounting than assessments for eating addiction and smartphone addiction. Perhaps even more useful, the researchers found that delay discounting increases with the severity of the addiction.

How to Reduce Delay Discounting

Recognizing that this impatience for reward undergirds many behavioral and substance use addictions, is there anything that can be done to reduce a person’s delay discounting, making them more patient for reward?

Of course, there is a systematic review and meta-analysis to tell us if there’s a way to reduce delay discounting. The research by Dutch scientists appeared in the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. Researchers reviewed 98 studies involving 151 experiments at reducing delay discounting (DD) in persons age 12 and older.

Researchers found:

Regarding the studies evaluating the effects of manipulations on DD, 86% found the expected reductions in DD, 13% found null results or unexpected increases in DD and 1% found mixed results. These results indicate that DD can be decreased, showing that DD is profoundly context dependent and changeable.

What do they mean by context dependent? That means, depending on how the training is presented. Here’s an example: When impulse control is introduced as part of treatment for cocaine addiction, it is much more effective when presented as part of financial planning. Financial planning and budgeting help addicts see the costs of their addictions and lead to reduced substance use. One study found that delay discounting increased more from taking a financial planning course than an abnormal psychology course.

The study also found that social context was extremely important to the effectiveness of delay discounting training. In five experiments on social context and delay discounting, 80% found positive effects. This shows the importance of such addiction treatment strategies as community reinforcement, which enlarge the social context.

Contrary to what one would expect, the researchers found that shorter duration training was more effective than longer, more thorough training. In part, this is due to the most dramatic impacts showing up at the first measurement. It’s also due, in part, to the high dropout rate of participants in addiction treatment trials.

The therapies used make for a wonderful cornucopia of techniques for strengthening delay discounting in children and adults. Most promising, according to the researchers, is mindfulness, learning how to observe one’s thoughts rather than acting on them. In contrast to mindfulness, which focuses on the present, focusing on the future is also an effective delay discounting tool.

Not being able to see one’s self in the future — not having a goal or a plan — is a main driver of delay discounting and a major problem for addiction recovery. Episodic future thinking helps children and adults project themselves into the future and develop strategies for achieving goals. Financial planning and enforced budgeting are also very effective at getting people to understand the financial costs of their obsessions, which is proven to reduce delay discounting.

The Dutch researchers evaluate these methods:

[T]he most encouraging line of research regarding manipulations seems to be the “future” category, especially “future episodic thinking” and “connectivity to future (self)” manipulations with 83% and 91% effectiveness rates, respectively.

Other researchers have found that for persons battling eating addiction, exercise reduced delay discounting more than dieting. And yet another study found that, when storytelling is incorporated into episodic future thinking exercises, the reduction in delay discounting is even greater.

The conclusion here is pretty clear. If you help children keep their eyes on the prize, and give them tools to see themselves in the future, to make goals and plans for achieving those goals, and provide them with some financial literacy, you will strengthen their ability to overcome minor setbacks and avoid activities that are not goal-directed.

And if they don’t learn these skills as children, they can learn them as adults, building better lives with less substance abuse and greater rewards.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published July 24, 2025.

Sources:

“A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Delay Discounting and Cannabis Use,” Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, December 2021.

“Delay Discounting in Established and Proposed Behavioral Addictions: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, November 25, 2021.

“Exercise and diet effects on delay discounting and related neurobiology in adults with overweight or obesity: A randomized trial,” Obesity, July 2025.

“A story to tell: the role of narratives in reducing delay discounting for people who strongly discount the future,” Memory, June 3, 2021.

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