Adult age differences in decision making across domains: Increased discounting of social and health-related rewards

Abstract

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

Figure 1. Hypothetical Discounting Tasks

(a) Trial structure for discounting tasks. Options were presented onscreen until participants made a choice. (b) Sample options for Temporal Discounting Tasks displayed in the first row, Probability Discounting Tasks displayed in the second row, and Effort Discounting Tasks displayed in the third row. Monetary rewards are shown in the first column, social rewards in the second column, and health reward in the third column.

Figure 2. Age effects on Hypothetical Discounting

Proportion of more immediate choices as a function of age displayed in the first row, proportion of more certain choices displayed in the second row, and proportion of easy choices in the third row. Monetary rewards are shown in the first column, social rewards in the second column, and health reward in the third column. Linear effects are shown in black and quadratic effects are shown in color. Shaded region denotes 95% confidence interval.