Many Western societies are rapidly aging - in the United States, for example, demographers project a dramatic increase in the number of older adults in the next 20 years due to the increase in life expectancy over the past century. This trend raises concern among decision researchers and policy analysts because older adults are being charged more and more with the task of making crucial, complex decisions in such areas as retirement planning, financial management, and healthcare at the same time they are experiencing declines in deliberative psychological processes critical to decision making. The proposed research will examine whether the reasoning strategies older adults employ might help them overcome the cognitive deficits associated with aging and allow them to make effective choices in the most consequential life domains. That is, the proposed research will examine whether motivational shifts toward emotional goals and intuitive reasoning in later life could help assuage the declines in the deliberative cognitive processes critical to optimal decision making. More specifically, the research will: (1) examine the extent to which younger and older adults rely on affective/intuitive versus cognitive/deliberative decision processes and the factors associated with the different strategies employed by younger and older adults; (2) explore how the myriad changes that occur with increased age - including cognitive decline, preservation of emotional processes, motivational shifts toward emotional goals, and increased life experience - impact decision making; and (3) uncover the positive and negative downstream consequences of affective versus deliberative decision processes across the adult life span. By pursuing these three aims, this project promises to increase our understanding of affective and deliberative processes in decision making across the adult life span, and guide the way to proscriptive recommendations for how to improve decision making among both older and younger adults.
