Economic and social deprivation predicts impulsive choice in children

Abstract

Impulsivity is an individual difference in decision-making that is a risk factor for a number of health concerns including addiction and obesity. Although impulsivity has a large heritable component, the health concerns associated with impulsivity are not uniformly distributed across society. For example, people from poorer backgrounds are more likely to be overweight, and be dependent on tobacco or alcohol. This suggests that the environmental component of impulsivity might be related to economic circumstances and the availability of resources. This paper provides evidence that children aged 4 to 12 from the most deprived areas in England show greater impulsivity in the form of delay discounting than do children from the least deprived areas. The data are discussed with reference to scarcity-based models of decision-making and to public health inequalities.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12872-4
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Psychology
Aston University (General)
Additional Information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Behavior, Addictive,Child,Ethanol,Humans,Impulsive Behavior,Public Health,Social Deprivation
Publication ISSN: 2045-2322
Last Modified: 02 Dec 2024 08:40
Date Deposited: 06 Jun 2022 10:06
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.nat ... 598-022-12872-4 (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2022-05-27
Accepted Date: 2022-05-10
Submitted Date: 2022-01-27
Authors: Tunney, Richard J. (ORCID Profile 0000-0003-4673-757X)

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