1 Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development.
2 Center for Cognitive and Decision Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of Basel.
Psychol Sci. 2017 Apr;28(4):504-518. doi: 10.1177/0956797616687729. Epub 2017 Feb 1.
We separate for the first time the roles of cognitive and motivational factors in shaping age differences in decision making under risk. Younger and older adults completed gain, loss, and mixed-domain choice problems as well as measures of cognitive functioning and affect. The older adults' decision quality was lower than the younger adults' in the loss domain, and this age difference was attributable to the older adults' lower cognitive abilities. In addition, the older adults chose the more risky option more often than the younger adults in the gain and mixed domains; this difference in risk aversion was attributable to less pronounced negative affect among the older adults. Computational modeling with a hierarchical Bayesian implementation of cumulative prospect theory revealed that the older adults had higher response noise and more optimistic decision weights for gains than did the younger adults. Moreover, the older adults showed no loss aversion, a finding that supports a positivity-focus (rather than a loss-prevention) view of motivational reorientation in older age.
我们首次将认知和动机因素的作用分开，以研究风险决策中的年龄差异。年轻和年长的成年人完成了收益、损失和混合领域的选择问题，以及认知功能和情感的测量。在损失领域，老年人的决策质量低于年轻人，这种年龄差异归因于老年人较低的认知能力。此外，老年人在收益和混合领域比年轻人更频繁地选择风险更大的选项；这种风险规避的差异归因于老年人的负面情绪不那么明显。使用累积前景理论的分层贝叶斯实现进行计算建模表明，老年人对收益的反应噪声更高，决策权重更乐观，而年轻人则不是。此外，老年人没有表现出损失厌恶，这一发现支持了老年人在动机重新定位方面的积极关注（而不是损失预防）观点。
