Choosing now Over Later: What Temporal Discounting Reveals About Italian University Students and Addiction Risk

Delay, or temporal discounting - the tendency to prefer smaller immediate rewards over larger delayed ones - is a cognitive phenomenon closely linked to impulsivity, executive functioning, and addiction. It is also regarded as a transdiagnostic marker across various psychiatric conditions. Following its significance, research on addiction risk has examined this phenomenon within university students, as a vulnerable group due to the transition from adolescence to early adulthood, along with the academic stress and pressure they commonly experience. In the present study, we examined the relationship between temporal discounting and psychological risk factors associated with the development and maintenance of addictive behaviors in a sample of Italian university students. Participants (N = 175) completed an intertemporal choice task involving decisions between hypothetical monetary rewards available either immediately or after a specified delay. In addition, they completed self-report questionnaires assessing emotional dysregulation, psychological distress, alexithymia, body awareness, autonomic reactivity, and potentially addictive behaviors. The results indicated that steeper discounting rates were significantly associated with higher levels of addiction-related factors and specific psychological profiles, including emotional dysregulation, obsessive thinking, and difficulties in emotional stability and reactivity. These findings underlie the importance of reward-related decision-making and emotional regulation/processing as individual vulnerability factors for addiction among university students. They also suggest potential targets for prevention and early intervention strategies in this population.