scholarly journals How Cues of Being Watched Promote Risk Seeking in Fund Investment in Older Adults

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meijia Li ◽  
Huamao Peng

Social cues, such as being watched, can subtly alter fund investment choices. This study aimed to investigate how cues of being watched influence decision-making, attention allocation, and risk tendencies. Using decision scenarios adopted from the “Asian Disease Problem,” we examined participants’ risk tendency in a financial scenario when they were watched. A total of 63 older and 66 younger adults participated. Eye tracking was used to reveal the decision-maker’s attention allocation (fixations and dwell time per word). The results found that both younger and older adults tend to seek risk in the loss frame than in the gain frame (i.e., framing effect). Watching eyes tended to escalate reckless gambling behaviors among older adults, which led them to maintain their share in the depressed fund market, regardless of whether the options were gain or loss framed. The eye-tracking results revealed that older adults gave less attention to the sure option in the eye condition (i.e., fewer fixations and shorter dwell time). However, their attention was maintained on the gamble options. In comparison, images of “watching eyes” did not influence the risk seeking of younger adults but decreased their framing effect. Being watched can affect financial risk preference in decision-making. The exploration of the contextual sensitivity of being watched provides us with insight into developing decision aids to promote rational financial decision-making, such as human-robot interactions. Future research on age differences still requires further replication.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 557-557
Author(s):  
JoNell Strough ◽  
Corinna Loeckenhoff ◽  
Susan Charles

Abstract Maintaining sound decision-making skills in later life is a key concern in the face of population aging. The four presentations in this symposium highlight the importance of considering socio-emotional and contextual factors when investigating adult age differences in decision making. Together, they show that features of decision contexts such as the way information is presented, along with social relationships and emotional responses, have distinct implications for understanding age effects in decision-related processing and outcomes. Drawing from fuzzy trace theory, Nolte, Löckenhoff and Reyna showed that gist-based (“good,” “extremely poor”) versus verbatim information (exact numbers) was differentially appealing to younger and older adults, with older adults seeking more gist information than verbatim information. Young and Mikels investigated older and younger adults’ integral emotional responses to a behavioral risk-taking task. Younger adults experienced more anger and less contentment than older adults. These emotions differentially predicted risk taking in the two groups. Seaman, Christensen, Senn, Cooper, and Cassidy found age differences in learning about the trustworthiness of social partners. Older adults showed less learning relative to younger adults and invested less with trustworthy partners and more with untrustworthy partners. Smith, Strough, Parker and Bruine de Bruin found that older age, perceiving better decision-making ability than age peers, and perceiving declines in ability over time, were associated with lesser preferences for making decisions with others. In her discussion, Charles will integrate these findings with existing research on aging and decision making and offers directions for future research.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Drew Jordan McLaughlin ◽  
Todd Samuel Braver ◽  
Jonathan E. Peelle

Purpose: Objective measures of listening effort have been gaining prominence, as they provide metrics to quantify the difficulty of understanding speech under a variety of circumstances. A key challenge has been to develop paradigms that enable the complementary measurement of subjective listening effort in a quantitatively precise manner. In the present study, we introduce a novel decision-making paradigm to examine age-related and individual differences in subjective effort during listening.Method: Older and younger adults were presented with spoken sentences mixed with speech-shaped noise at multiple signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). On each trial subjects were offered the choice between completing an easier listening trial (presented at +20 dB SNR) for a smaller monetary reward, or a harder listening trial (presented at either +4, 0, -4, -8, or -12 dB SNR) for a greater monetary reward. By varying the amount of the reward offered for the easier option, the subjective value of performing effortful listening trials at each SNR could be assessed. Results: Older adults discounted the value of effortful listening to a greater degree than young adults, opting to accept less money in order to avoid more difficult SNRs. Additionally, older adults with poorer hearing and smaller working memory capacities were more likely to choose easier trials; however, in younger adults, no relationship with hearing or working memory was found. Self-reported measures of economic status did not affect these relationships. Conclusion: These findings suggest that subjective listening effort depends on factors including, but not necessarily limited to, hearing and working memory. Additionally, this study demonstrates that economic decision-making paradigms can be a useful approach for assessing subjective listening effort, and may prove beneficial in future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-347
Author(s):  
Drew J. McLaughlin ◽  
Todd S. Braver ◽  
Jonathan E. Peelle

Purpose Objective measures of listening effort have been gaining prominence, as they provide metrics to quantify the difficulty of understanding speech under a variety of circumstances. A key challenge has been to develop paradigms that enable the complementary measurement of subjective listening effort in a quantitatively precise manner. In this study, we introduce a novel decision-making paradigm to examine age-related and individual differences in subjective effort during listening. Method Older and younger adults were presented with spoken sentences mixed with speech-shaped noise at multiple signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). On each trial, subjects were offered the choice between completing an easier listening trial (presented at +20 dB SNR) for a smaller monetary reward and completing a harder listening trial (presented at either +4, 0, −4, −8, or −12 dB SNR) for a greater monetary reward. By varying the amount of the reward offered for the easier option, the subjective value of performing effortful listening trials at each SNR could be assessed. Results Older adults discounted the value of effortful listening to a greater degree than young adults, opting to accept less money in order to avoid more difficult SNRs. Additionally, older adults with poorer hearing and smaller working memory capacities were more likely to choose easier trials; however, in younger adults, no relationship with hearing or working memory was found. Self-reported measures of economic status did not affect these relationships. Conclusions These findings suggest that subjective listening effort depends on factors including, but not necessarily limited to, hearing and working memory. Additionally, this study demonstrates that economic decision-making paradigms can be a useful approach for assessing subjective listening effort and may prove beneficial in future research.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Marianne Yee ◽  
Sarah L Adams ◽  
Asad Beck ◽  
Todd Samuel Braver

Motivational incentives play an influential role in value-based decision-making and cognitive control. A compelling hypothesis in the literature suggests that the brain integrates the motivational value of diverse incentives (e.g., motivational integration) into a common currency value signal that influences decision-making and behavior. To investigate whether motivational integration processes change during healthy aging, we tested older (N=44) and younger (N=54) adults in an innovative incentive integration task paradigm that establishes dissociable and additive effects of liquid (e.g., juice, neutral, saltwater) and monetary incentives on cognitive task performance. The results reveal that motivational incentives improve cognitive task performance in both older and younger adults, providing novel evidence demonstrating that age-related cognitive control deficits can be ameliorated with sufficient incentive motivation. Additional analyses revealed clear age-related differences in motivational integration. Younger adult task performance was modulated by both monetary and liquid incentives, whereas monetary reward effects were more gradual in older adults and more strongly impacted by trial-by-trial performance feedback. A surprising discovery was that older adults shifted attention from liquid valence toward monetary reward throughout task performance, but younger adults shifted attention from monetary reward toward integrating both monetary reward and liquid valence by the end of the task, suggesting differential strategic utilization of incentives. Together these data suggest that older adults may have impairments in incentive integration, and employ different motivational strategies to improve cognitive task performance. The findings suggest potential candidate neural mechanisms that may serve as the locus of age-related change, providing targets for future cognitive neuroscience investigations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Ran Zhang ◽  
Luming Zhao ◽  
Lin Wu ◽  
Hongxu Chen ◽  
Gaoxing Zhou ◽  
...  

The framing effect is a key topic that has been insufficiently studied in research on behavioral decision making. In our study we explored the effects of optimism on self-framing and risky decision making. Participants were 416 undergraduates who responded to the Life Orientation Test and a self-framing test based on the Asian disease problem. The results demonstrate that, compared with people low in optimism, highly optimistic individuals tended to use more positive words to describe problems, generate more positive frames, and choose more risky options. There was also a significant self-framing effect: Participants with a negative frame tended to be risk-seeking, whereas those with a positive frame tended to avoid risks. Additionally, selfframing suppressed the effect of optimism on risky decision making. We can conclude that optimism has significant effects on self-framing and risky decision making.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 881-882
Author(s):  
Alexandra Watral ◽  
Kevin Trewartha

Abstract Motor decision-making processes are required for many standard neuropsychological tasks, including the Trail Making Test (TMT), that aim to assess cognitive functioning in older adults. However, in their standard formats, it is difficult to isolate the relative contributions of sensorimotor and cognitive processes to performance on these neuropsychological tasks. Recently developed clinical tasks use a robotic manipulandum to assess both motor and cognitive aspects of rapid motor decision making in an object hit (OH) and object hit and avoid (OHA) task. We administered the OH and OHA tasks to 77 healthy younger adults and 59 healthy older adults to assess age differences in the motor and cognitive measures of performance. We administered the TMT parts A and B to assess the extent to which OHA performance is associated with executive functioning in particular. The results indicate that after controlling for hand speed, older adults performed worse on the OH and OHA tasks than younger adults, performance declines were far greater in the OHA task, and the global performance measures, which have been associated with cognitive status, were more sensitive to age differences than motor measures of performance. Those global measures of performance were also associated with measures of executive functioning on the TMT task. These findings provide evidence that rapid motor decision making tasks are sensitive to declines in executive control in aging. They also provide a way to isolate cognitive declines from declines in sensorimotor processes that are likely a contributing factor to age differences in neuropsychological test performance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S296-S297
Author(s):  
Ruth E Pel-Littel ◽  
Bianca Buurman ◽  
Marjolein van de Pol ◽  
Linda Tulner ◽  
Mirella Minkman ◽  
...  

Abstract Shared decision making (SDM) in older patients is more complex when multiple chronic conditions (MCC) have to be taken into account. The aim of this research is to explore the effect of the evidence based implementation intervention SDMMCC on (1) the preferred and perceived participation (2) decisional conflict and (3) actual SDM during consultations. 216 outpatients participated in a video observational study. The intervention existed of a SDM training for geriatricians and a preparatory tool for patients. Consultations were videotaped and coded with the OPTIONMCC. Pre- and post-consultation questionnaires were completed. Participation was measured by the Patients’ perceived Involvement in Care Scale (PICS). Decisional conflict was measured by the Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS). The patients mean age was 77 years, 56% was female. The preparatory tool was completed by 56 older adults (52%), of which 64% rated the tool as positive. The preparatory tool was used in 12% of the consultations. The mean overall OPTIONMCC score showed no significant changes on the level of SDM(39.3 vs 39.3 P0.98), however there were significant improvements on discussing goals and options on sub-items of the scale. There were no significant differences found in the match on preferred and perceived participation (86.5% vs 85.0% P 0.595) or in decisional conflict (22.7 vs 22.9 P0.630). The limited use of the preparatory tool could have biased the effect of the intervention. In future research more attention must be paid towards the implementation of preparatory tools, not only among patients but also among geriatricians.


2019 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel A. Cowell ◽  
Elizabeth R. Paitel ◽  
Sierra Peters

Understanding how older adults successfully navigate complex choices like driving requires the consideration of processing speed, inhibitory control, attentional processes, and risk management, and the context within which these decisions occur. The current study employed the Flanker task, the Stoplight task, and a personality inventory with 43 younger adults and 49 older adults either while they were alone or being observed by two same-sex, similarly aged peers. On the Flanker task, older adults performed more slowly, but with comparable accuracy. On the Stoplight task, there was a significant main effect of Context, and an Age-Group by Sex interaction, even after controlling for response time: All groups had a greater number of crashes when alone, and young adult males had significantly more crashes than any other group. These results emphasize the importance of considering the broader context of decision-making.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S412-S412
Author(s):  
Kristina Shiroma ◽  
Nathan Davis ◽  
Bo Xie

Abstract Older adults of Asian ethnic minority groups are often underrepresented in the literature on cultural aspects of end-of-life (EOL) decision making. This literature review aimed to systematically investigate the cultural aspects of EOL decision making for aging adults of Asian ethnic minority groups. In February 2019, systematic searches were conducted in PubMed using MeSH terms “end-of-life”, “decision-making”, and “culture OR cultural”. Articles with human subjects, full text in English, published in the past 10 years, with original, empirical findings were included. After multiple rounds of screening, the final sample included 22 results, with sample sizes ranging from 11 to over 9 millions representing South Asian, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, Singaporean, Asian and Asian/Pacific adults. The findings suggest the literature on older Asian adults is present, but limited. Future research is needed to explore cultural aspects of Asian ethnic minority groups in respect to older adult’s information preferences in EOL decision-making.


2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 1375-1380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darrell A. Worthy ◽  
Marissa A. Gorlick ◽  
Jennifer L. Pacheco ◽  
David M. Schnyer ◽  
W. Todd Maddox

In two experiments, younger and older adults performed decision-making tasks in which reward values available were either independent of or dependent on the previous sequence of choices made. The choice-independent task involved learning and exploiting the options that gave the highest rewards on each trial. In this task, the stability of the expected reward for each option was not influenced by the previous choices participants made. The choice-dependent task involved learning how each choice influenced future rewards for two options and making the best decisions based on that knowledge. Younger adults performed better when rewards were independent of choice, whereas older adults performed better when rewards were dependent on choice. These findings suggest a fundamental difference in the way in which younger adults and older adults approach decision-making situations. We discuss the results in the context of prominent decision-making theories and offer possible explanations based on neurobiological and behavioral changes associated with aging.


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