Impatience and grades: Delay-discount rates correlate negatively with college GPA

Because the rewards of academic performance in college are often delayed, the delay-discounting model of impulsiveness (Ainslie (1975) [Ainslie, G. Specious reward: A behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control. Psychological Bulletin, 82 (4), 463-496] predicts that academic performance should tend to decrease as people place less weight on future outcomes. To test this hypothesis, we estimated (hyperbolic) discount rates for real delayed monetary rewards (US$10 to US$20) using second-price auction procedures with 247 undergraduates at two liberal arts colleges. College GPA was reliably correlated with discount rates, r=−.19 (p=.003), and remained reliable after partialling out SAT scores. The results add to the external validity of the discounting model of impulsiveness, and point to a possible contributor to academic performance of interest in the study of higher education.