CTutor: Helping People Learn to Avoid Present Bias During Decision Making

Calarina Muslimani, Saba Gul, Matthew E. Taylor, Carrie Demmans Epp, Christabel Wayllace

Abstract: Procrastination can harm many aspects of life, including physical, mental, or financial well-being. It is often a consequence of people’s tendency to prefer immediate benefits over long-term rewards (i.e., present bias). Due to its prevalence, we created C\(^{2}\)Tutor, an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) that can potentially reduce procrastination habits by teaching planning strategies. C\(^{2}\)Tutor teaches people how to make decisions aligned with long-term benefits. It will discourage present bias behavior while allowing for differences in user cognitive abilities. Our study found that C\(^{2}\)Tutor encourages far-sighted behavior while reducing maladaptive planning-strategy use.