Risky choice in younger versus older adults: Affective context matters

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. ©2013.