Abstract
Leading theory hypothesizes that age deficits in decision making may rise as the complexity of decision-related information increases. This suggests that older adults would benefit relative to young adults from simplification of information used to inform decision making. Participants indicated political, nutritional and medical preferences and then chose between politicians, foods and medicines. The amount of information presented was systematically varied but age differences were largely similar for simple and complex trials. Paradoxically, the data showed that decisions based on simpler information could be less aligned with participant’s preferences than decisions based on more complex information. Further analyses suggested that participants may have been responding purely on the basis of their most valued preferences and that when information about those preferences was not presented, decision making became poorer. Contrary to our expectations, simplification of information by exclusion may therefore hinder decision making and may not particularly help older adults.
Highlights
Leading theory hypothesizes that age deficits in decision making may rise as the complexity of decision-related information increases
The influence of task complexity has been linked to executive functioning in age comparisons of decision making, usually showing age deficits for tasks of increasing complexity
We aimed to evaluate if young and older adults could make better decisions when less information was presented by manipulating the amount of information available for decision making across simple and complex trials
Summary
Leading theory hypothesizes that age deficits in decision making may rise as the complexity of decision-related information increases. Higher life expectancy (Salomon et al, 2012) and the maturity of the WWII ‘baby boom’ generation (Van Bavel & Reher, 2013) has led to a large increase in the age of people in positions of power in business and politics (cf Frey, Mata, & Hertwig, 2015). It is becoming ever more important to understand age-related change and its impact on individuals and society, because of the large range of cognitive differences shown between young and older adults (e.g., Craik & Salthouse, 2008; Deary et al, 2009). Finucane et al (2002) and Finucane, Mertz, Slovic, and Schmidt (2005) showed that when information needed to be processed before decisions could be made (e.g., combinations of percentages weighed against one another), age deficits were particularily large and they showed greater inconsistency in older adults’ decisions relative to young adults’ decisions when the same information was presented in different ways (e.g., ordered vs. unordered)
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