Why Immediate Gratification Is So Powerful

There is more scientific explanation about how and why getting people to act right away can be so powerful. Harvard Business Review’s Daily Stat excerpted more findings about the way our brains work.

Harvard economist David I. Laibson explained that the “impatient” brain, which dominates when we think about immediate gratification, discounts at about 4% per minute, but the “patient” brain, which takes over when we consider much-later benefits, discounts at a slower rate — about 1% per minute.

An offer of a free massage right now might look a lot better than a free massage in an hour, but we’d see little difference in offers of massages at, say, 2pm or 3pm one week from now. This is interesting and surprising because “in theory” we should place the same value on the messages regardless of when they are scheduled.

Perhaps this helps to explain why direct mail has an immediate response spike and a very long term response.

One comment

  1. […] buy impulsively. I am willing to believe that as the human brain when impatient, discounts at about 4% per minute. What this means is that people look to the immediate future and will more likely want to go with […]

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