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Risky choice in younger versus older adults: Affective context matters

  • Yumi Huang
  • , Stacey Wood
  • , Dale Berger
  • , Yaniv Hanoch
  • Claremont Graduate University
  • Scripps College
  • Plymouth University

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Earlier frameworks have indicated that older adults tend to experience decline in their deliberative decisional capacity, while their affective abilities tend to remain intact (Peters, Hess, Västfjäll, & Auman, 2007). The present study applied this framework to the study of risky decision-making across the lifespan. Two versions of the Columbia Card Task (CCT) were used to trigger either affective decision-making (i.e., the “warm” CCT) or deliberative decision-making (i.e., the “cold” CCT) in a sample of 158 individuals across the lifespan. Overall there were no age differences in risk seeking. However, there was a significant interaction between age and condition, such that older adults were relatively more risk seeking in the cold condition only. In terms of everyday decision-making, context matters and risk propensity may shift within older adults depending upon the context.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)179-187
Number of pages9
JournalJudgment and Decision Making
Volume8
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2013
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Copyright © The Authors [2013] This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Keywords

  • decision-making
  • dual system
  • age difference
  • risk taking
  • risky choice

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