Carpe Diem: Adaptation and Devaluing the Future
- 1 March 2005
- journal article
- review article
- Published by University of Chicago Press in The Quarterly Review of Biology
- Vol. 80 (1) , 55-60
- https://doi.org/10.1086/431025
Abstract
Organisms typically “discount the future” in their decision making, but the extent to which they do so varies across species, sexes, age classes, and circumstances. This variability has been studied by biologists, economists, psychologists, and criminologists. We argue that the conceptual framework required for an interdisciplinary synthesis of knowledge in this area is the evolutionary adaptationist analysis of reproductive effort scheduling pioneered by George Williams.Keywords
This publication has 13 references indexed in Scilit:
- Augmented discounting: interaction between ageing and time–preference behaviourProceedings Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2003
- Mild opioid deprivation increases the degree that opioid-dependent outpatients discount delayed heroin and moneyPsychopharmacology, 2002
- A life-history perspective on strategic mating effort in male scorpionfliesBehavioral Ecology, 2002
- The Tithonus Error in Modern GerontologyThe Quarterly Review of Biology, 1999
- Discounting of delayed rewards across the life span: age differences in individual discounting functionsBehavioural Processes, 1999
- Division of labor by division of risk according to worker life expectancy in the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.)Apidologie, 1998
- Delay-discounting probabilistic rewards: Rates decrease as amounts increasePsychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1996
- Life expectancy and reproductionNature, 1993
- IMPULSE CONTROL IN PIGEONS1Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1974
- Natural Selection, the Costs of Reproduction, and a Refinement of Lack's PrincipleThe American Naturalist, 1966