Individual differences in time perspectives and risky financial choices

•High present hedonistic time perspective reduces the propensity to invest.•It also facilitates the propensity to take risky financial and investment choices.•High future time perspective enhances the propensity to invest.•It also reduces the propensity to take risky investment choices.•The effects were observed for chronic and situationally induced Time Perspectives.

Preferences for risks have been a subject of interest to both economists and psychologists. This has given rise to many findings about the role of psychological factors in influencing risky choices. The presented studies focused on the role of Time Perspectives (TPs) in explaining people's risky financial choices. The main goal was to examine the relationship between people's TPs (chronic and induced) and their propensity to invest and undertake investment risks. Three studies on Polish national representative samples (N1 = 1093; N2 = 1081, N3 = 1563) and one on a sample of Polish adults (N4 = 246) were conducted. The results showed that chronic Future and Present Hedonistic TPs are the most important in the context of risky financial choices. Higher Future TP is related to a propensity to invest and make safe investment choices. Higher Present Hedonistic TP is related to a low propensity to invest and risky investment. Moreover, induced Future and Present Hedonistic TPs lead to similar patterns of results to those obtained in studies on chronic TPs.