Normal Aging and Decision Making: The Role of Motivation

Abstract

The main argument of this review is that motivational development associated with normal aging affects decision making. With increasing age, the ratio of gains to losses becomes more and more unfavorable. Reflecting the increasing losses in resources, goal orientation changes from a predominant orientation towards gains in young adulthood to an increasingly stronger orientation towards the prevention of loss in older adulthood. As goals serve as reference points for the evaluation of decision outcomes, this change in goal orientation across adulthood might also affect decision making. The decision-making literature has recognized that choices are influenced by goal orientation. However, little research has been conducted on how goals influence the decision-making process in general and with regard to aging in particular. To date, findings on decision making and aging remain inconsistent and are in need of a developmental framework. With regard to applications, a better understanding of the aging decision maker can provide insight into how to improve communication efforts about issues like advance care planning, medical treatment, and housing options.

Messages that matter: Age differences in affective responses to framed health messages.

“…Additionally, insofar as younger adults felt more negatively about the loss-framed messages relative to the older adults, these results suggest that the loss-orientation of older adults leads them to feel more positively about loss-framed messages relative to younger adults (Depping & Freund, 2011). The physiological data indicate that the older adults had less physiological reactivity overall relative to the young, consistent with previous research (e.g., Levenson et al, 1991).…”

“…It could be reasoned that, with age-related increases in loss, older adults may have more positive responses to loss-framed messages as they may feel better about loss prevention relative to the young. Conversely, as losses are uncommon and unexpected in youth, younger adults may react more negatively to loss-framed messages relative to the old (Depping & Freund, 2011). …”

Individual classification of strong risk attitudes: An application across lottery types and age groups

“…First, the age differences found are in line with one motivational theory of aging, Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (e.g., Carstensen et al 1999), which suggests that older adults tend to place a greater weight on the best possible outcomes within a given environment, outcomes which in the present design were always associated with the riskier lottery. Future work is needed to test this account against other motivational theories (see Depping & Freund 2011). Second, another possibility is that age differences were driven by a "peanuts effect" (Prelec & Loewenstein, 1991), according to which a greater relative prevalence of risk-seeking preferences among older adults is expected given that they are typically wealthier than younger adults (especially college students), making the payoffs more consequential to the latter group than to the former.…”

When choice matters: Task-dependent memory effects in older adulthood.

“…As expected, older adults' better memory for negative information compared with younger adults was found when the information was presented in a decision-making context. One interpretation of these results is that older adults are more motivated to avoid losses when making decisions than younger adults (Depping & Freund, 2011). According to this interpretation, older adults process negative information preferentially when making a decision because negative information is more diagnostic than positive information when attempting to minimize losses.…”