Pu Bingyan, Peng Huamao, Xia Shiyong
1 Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, China.
2 China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China.
Int J Aging Hum Dev. 2017 Sep;85(3):305-325. doi: 10.1177/0091415017691284. Epub 2017 Feb 19.
Framing effect studies indicate that individuals are risk averse for decisions framed as gains but risk-seeking for decisions framed as losses. Findings of age-related differences in susceptibility to framing are mixed. In the current study, we examined emotional arousal in two decision tasks (life saving vs. money gambling) to evaluate the effects of emotion on age differences in the framing effect. When cognitive abilities and styles were controlled, there was a framing effect in the younger group in the life-saving task, a high-emotional arousal task, while older adults did not display this classic framing effect pattern. They showed risk aversion in both positive and negative framing. Age differences existed in the framing effect. Conversely, younger and older adults in the money-gambling task both displayed the framing effect; there was no age difference. When the cognitive abilities were not controlled, the pattern of results in the high-emotional arousal task remained unchanged, while greater framing effects were found, from the perspective of effect size, for older than younger adults in the low-emotional arousal task. Limited cognitive resources would not hamper older adults' performances when their emotional arousal was high. However, older adults with low-level emotional arousal were more susceptible than younger adults to framing because of declining cognitive capacities. This implied the importance of emotion in older adults' decision making and supported the selective engagement hypothesis.
框架效应研究表明，个体在面对以收益为框架的决策时表现出风险厌恶，而在面对以损失为框架的决策时表现出风险寻求。关于框架效应易感性的年龄相关差异的研究结果并不一致。在本研究中，我们在两项决策任务（救生与金钱赌博）中考察了情绪唤起，以评估情绪对框架效应年龄差异的影响。当控制了认知能力和风格后，在高情绪唤起任务即救生任务中，年轻组存在框架效应，而老年人并未表现出这种经典的框架效应模式。他们在正向和负向框架中均表现出风险厌恶。框架效应存在年龄差异。相反，在金钱赌博任务中，年轻人和老年人都表现出框架效应；不存在年龄差异。当未控制认知能力时，高情绪唤起任务中的结果模式保持不变，而从效应量的角度来看，在低情绪唤起任务中，老年人比年轻人表现出更大的框架效应。当老年人情绪唤起较高时，有限的认知资源不会妨碍他们的表现。然而，情绪唤起水平较低的老年人由于认知能力下降，比年轻人更容易受到框架效应的影响。这暗示了情绪在老年人决策中的重要性，并支持了选择性参与假说。
