Short-term cost for long-term benefit: Time preference and cancer control.

A tradeoff between short-term costs and long-term gains characterizes many cancer control behaviors, such as behavior change (e.g., quitting smoking), screening (e.g., mammography), and prevention (e.g., healthy diet). One factor that may influence these tradeoffs is time preference, or the value assigned to future outcomes relative to immediate ones. Studies of the relationship between individual differences in time preference and preventive...