SYNONYMS AND RELATED EXPRESSIONS
present-biased
adjective
Giving disproportionately greater weight to an immediate outcome than to a later one.
Local English device voice, when available. This is not a recorded dictionary pronunciation.
Overweighting immediate outcomes
No close substitute is listed for this sense. The expressions below help explain the idea.
Related words and expressions
These extend or explain the idea and may require a different sentence structure.
Usage distinction
Return to topThese phrases explain the behavioral-economics adjective. Ordinary impatience or short-term planning does not by itself establish present bias; the special weight on immediacy matters.
CHECK THE MEANING IN CONTEXT
See present-biased in use
The example describes a present-biased choice between a small reward now and a larger reward later.
Choosing between supplies available now and a larger set later made the theater's planning intertemporal. Months ahead, the team preferred six bulbs a month after pickup day to four on pickup day; when that day arrived, it suddenly chose four immediately despite unchanged needs. The treasurer called that reversal present-biased because the immediate option gained disproportionate weight.
Compare an alternative with the original word in each passage. Shared meanings do not make every pair interchangeable.
Synonym reference scope and sources
The groups distinguish the senses selected for this study entry. Closest synonyms and broader related expressions have separate labels. The listed sources support lexical selection; not every phrase is a direct quotation from a source.
- Chakraborty, Present Bias (Econometrica, 2021)
- Goda et al., The Role of Time Preferences and Exponential-Growth Bias in Retirement Savings (NBER Working Paper 21482, 2015)
How the synonym reference was prepared / WordNet 3.0 license