Abstract
Information used by older adults engaging in a social decision making task of judging a protagonist as a good or a bad person was investigated. Older (n = 100, 50 women, mean age = 63.6 years) and younger (n = 100, 50 women, mean age = 25.7 years) adults participated in a web-based survey. In Experiment 1, we assessed participants’ rapid decision-making processes when making good or bad judgments after reading consecutive sentences without reviewing previously read sentences. The percentages of good judgments were analyzed. In Experiment 2, two protagonists engaging in a deliberate decision-making process were presented, and participants were asked to judge better and worse protagonists. The percentages of behavior-based judgments were analyzed. Results of Experiment 1 indicated that older adults judged protagonists as “good” more often than younger adults. Especially, older adults judged protagonists with good behavior as being “good.” In Experiment 2, older adults made behavior-based judgments more than younger people. Additionally, older and younger adults used information on personalities of protagonists for making judgments in situations with bad outcomes, or incongruent. Moreover, multiple regression analysis suggested that people with more general trust engaged more, whereas people with more caution engaged less in making behavior-based judgments.
Highlights
IntroductionIn 2015, the aging rate of the population (the ratio of people that are 65 years or older compared to the total population) was 26.8%
Older participants judged protagonists as “good” more often than younger participants. This finding suggests that older people compared to younger people attended to more positive than negative information (Löckenhoff and Carstensen, 2007). This positivity effect is evident in social decision making, for example, older people pay more attention to positive than to negative attributes when choosing doctors and hospitals (Löckenhoff and Carstensen, 2007, 2008), cars (Mather et al, 2005), and consumer products (Kim et al, 2008) more often than younger people
We predicted that older adults would judge the protagonists based on behavioral information, which was supported by the results of the deliberate decision processes examined in Experiment 2
Summary
In 2015, the aging rate of the population (the ratio of people that are 65 years or older compared to the total population) was 26.8%. This figure is estimated to reach approximately 30% and 40% in 2025 and 2060 respectively (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 2012). Criminal activities targeting the elderly have increased with the increase in the aging rate of the population. This is especially true of bank transfer frauds in which an estimated 86.1% of the victims are at least 65 years old (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2014)
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