Childhood environment and patience: Early-life resource scarcity and current threat influence duration estimation and persistence

Abstract

Childhood environment has a significant influence on individuals' psychology and behaviors. Those who grow up in harsh environments with resource scarcity and uncertainty tend to develop impatience and prefer investing resources in the present rather than the future. We hypothesized that childhood environment also affects patience in terms of duration estimation. In this research, we explored the effects of childhood resource scarcity and economic threat on the duration estimation and the persistence through three studies. Study 1 and Study 3 found that individuals growing up in resource-scarce environments tended to overestimate time and exhibited lower persistence in the economic threat situation. Moreover, duration estimation mediated the influence of childhood socioeconomic status on persistence. Study 2 provided causal evidence that priming childhood resource scarcity affected the duration estimation. The findings showed that individuals growing up in resource-scarce environments tended to overestimate the time cost of the task when facing threats, which led to impatient behavior. The present research investigated the effect of childhood resource scarcity on duration estimation for the first time, offering a novel perspective on time perception to comprehend the psychological and behavioral consequences of life history strategies.