<p>Intertemporal choice, a pervasive phenomenon in social life, involves evaluating and balancing gains and losses occurring at different times. Research into the mechanisms underlying intertemporal choice has yielded varied findings. Time discounting models propose an alternative-wise strategy, where decisions are driven by the discounting of future rewards. In contrast, attribute comparison models advocate an attribute-wise strategy, emphasizing the comparison of specific attributes across different options. Therefore, we adopted a comparative paradigm combining evidence from both process and outcome using the MouselabWEB and the eye-tracking techniques in three experiments. In Experiment 1 (<i>N</i> = 37), the mouselabWEB process data indicates that intertemporal choice processes are more similar to those on the time discount task. These results were supported in Experiment 2 (<i>N</i> = 37), in which eye-tracking data was analyzed. The drift-diffusion model analysis suggested that the diffusion velocity under the free answer strategy condition was significantly lower than in the attribute comparison strategy condition. In Experiment 3 (<i>N</i> = 35), participants tended to use an attribute-wise strategy and chose more delayed options when the choices were presented with a date rather than a number of days. In conclusion, evidence from both the processes and the outcomes supported the time discount model explanation of intertemporal choice. Moreover, the findings indicated that people could be nudged into using an attribute-wise strategy with a slight change in the time representation.</p>