BackgroundDecisions involving risk often must be made under stressful circumstances. Research on behavioral and brain differences in stress responses suggest that stress might have different effects on risk taking in males and females.Methodology/Principal FindingsIn this study, participants played a computer game designed to measure risk taking (the Balloon Analogue Risk Task) fifteen minutes after completing a stress challenge or control task. Stress increased risk taking among men but decreased it among women.Conclusions/SignificanceAcute stress amplifies sex differences in risk seeking; making women more risk avoidant and men more risk seeking. Evolutionary principles may explain these stress-induced sex differences in risk taking behavior.
A prevalent stereotype is that people become less risk taking and more cautious as they get older. However, in laboratory studies, findings are mixed and often reveal no age differences. In the current series of experiments, we examined whether age differences in risk seeking are more likely to emerge when choices include a certain option (a sure gain or a sure loss). In four experiments, we found that age differences in risk preferences only emerged when participants were offered a choice between a risky and a certain gamble but not when offered two risky gambles. In particular, Experiments 1 and 2 included only gambles about potential gains. Here, compared with younger adults, older adults preferred a certain gain over a chance to win a larger gain and thus, exhibited more risk aversion in the domain of gains. But in Experiments 3 and 4, when offered the chance to take a small sure loss rather than risking a larger loss, older adults exhibited more risk seeking in the domain of losses than younger adults. Both their greater preference for sure gains and greater avoidance of sure losses suggest that older adults weigh certainty more heavily than younger adults. Experiment 4 also indicates that older adults focus more on positive emotions than younger adults do when considering their options and that this emotional shift can at least partially account for age differences in how much people are swayed by certainty in their choices.
Animal research and human neuroimaging studies indicate that stress increases dopamine levels in brain regions involved in reward processing and stress also appears to increase the attractiveness of addictive drugs. The current study tested the hypothesis that stress increases reward salience, leading to more effective learning about positive than negative outcomes in a probabilistic selection task. Changes to dopamine pathways with age raise the question of whether stress effects on incentive-based learning differ by age. Thus, the present study also examined whether effects of stress on reinforcement learning differed for younger (age 18–34) and older participants (age 65–85). Cold pressor stress was administered to half of the participants in each age group and salivary cortisol levels were used to confirm biophysiological response to cold stress. Following the manipulation, participants completed a probabilistic learning task involving positive and negative feedback. In both younger and older adults, stress enhanced learning about cues that predicted positive outcomes. In addition, during the initial learning phase, stress diminished sensitivity to recent feedback across age groups. These results indicate that stress affects reinforcement learning in both younger and older adults and suggests that stress exerts different effects on specific components of reinforcement learning depending on their neural underpinnings.
In two experiments younger and older adults performed decision-making tasks where reward values available were either independent or dependent of 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 rewards for each option was not influenced by the choices participants made. The choice-dependent task involved learning how each choice influenced the rewards available for both options on future trials and making the best decisions based on that knowledge. Younger adults performed better when rewards were choice-independent, while older adults performed better when rewards were choice-dependent. This suggests a fundamental difference in the way in which younger and older adults approach decision-making situations. We discuss the results within the context of prominent decision-making theories, and offer possible explanations based on neurobiological and behavioral changes associated with aging.
Although research on aging and decision making continues to grow, the majority of studies examine decisions made to maximize monetary earnings or points. It is not clear whether these results generalize to other types of rewards. To investigate this, we examined adult age differences in ninety-two healthy participants aged 22–83. Participants completed nine hypothetical discounting tasks, which included three types of discounting factors (time, probability, effort) across three reward domains (monetary, social, health). Participants made choices between a smaller magnitude reward with a shorter time delay / higher probability / lower level of physical effort required and a larger magnitude reward with a longer time delay / lower probability / higher level of physical effort required. Older compared to younger individuals were more likely to choose options that involved shorter time delays or higher probabilities of experiencing an interaction with a close social partner or receiving health benefits from a hypothetical drug. These findings suggest that older adults may be more motivated than young adults to obtain social and health rewards immediately and with certainty.
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