Time preferences, cognitive abilities and intrinsic motivation to exert effort

ABSTRACT

The experimental literature has found a positive relationship between patience and performance in cognitive tests that are not incentivized by money. It has also been shown that unincentivized cognitive tests capture not only cognitive ability (CA), but also intrinsic motivation related to the test takers’ personality traits. In order to determine whether the relationship between patience and test scores is driven by intrinsic motivation or CA, we run an experiment in which subjects take either incentivized or unincentivized cognitive tests. We find that while incentivized test scores positively correlate with patience, the unincentivized scores are not related to the time preferences of our subjects. The observed correlation between patience and cognitive test scores therefore seems to be driven by CA rather than by intrinsic motivation related to personality traits.

KEYWORDS:

• Time preferences
• cognitive abilities
• intrinsic motivation
• laboratory experiment

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C91
• D91

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Tommaso Reggiani and an anonomous referee for helpful comments. We would like to thank Katarína Čellárová, Bára Karlínová and Hedvika Navrátilová for excellent research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Some studies have found a correlation between school grades and patience (see, e.g. Kirby, Winston, and Santiesteban 2005; Sutter et al. 2013; Vogt 2017). School grades are incentivized if they improve the career prospects of students. The difference between school grades and cognitive tests is that while grades also measure cognitive abilities, they are additionally affected by study efforts and other relevant school- and family-specific factors.

² Complete instructions as well as experimental data are available on request from corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation [grant number GA18-19492S].