Adult age differences in decision making across domains: Increased discounting of social and health-related rewards.
Although research on aging and decision making continues to grow, the majority of studies examine decisions made to maximize monetary earnings or points. It is not clear whether these results generalize to other types of rewards. To investigate this, we examined adult age differences in 92 healthy participants aged 22 to 83. Participants completed 9 hypothetical discounting tasks, which included 3 types of discounting factors (time, probability, effort) across 3 reward domains (monetary, social, health). Participants made choices between a smaller magnitude reward with a shorter time delay/higher probability/lower level of physical effort required and a larger magnitude reward with a longer time delay/lower probability/higher level of physical effort required. Older compared with younger individuals were more likely to choose options that involved shorter time delays or higher probabilities of experiencing an interaction with a close social partner or receiving health benefits from a hypothetical drug. These findings suggest that older adults may be more motivated than young adults to obtain social and health rewards immediately and with certainty. (PsycINFO Database Record
Department of Psychology, Yale University.
Kendra L
0000-0003-3008-923X
KL
Seaman
Department of Psychology, Yale University.
Marissa A
MA
Gorlick
Department of Psychology, Georgetown University.
Kruti M
0000-0003-3981-4637
KM
Vekaria
Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley.
Ming
M
Hsu
Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University.
David H
DH
Zald
Department of Psychology, Yale University.
Gregory R
GR
Samanez-Larkin
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012201:Reward; D055815:Young Adult