Age differences in moral judgment: Older adults are more deontological than younger adults

Abstract

In 2 studies, an older and a younger age group morally evaluated dilemmas contrasting a deontological judgment (do not harm others) against a utilitarian judgment (do what is best for the majority). Previous research suggests that deontological moral judgments are often underpinned by affective reactions and utilitarian moral judgments by deliberative thinking. Separately, research on the psychology of aging has shown that affect plays a more prominent role in the judgments and decision making of older (vs. younger) adults. Yet age remains a largely overlooked factor in moral judgment research. Here, we therefore investigated whether older adults would make more deontological judgments on the basis of experiencing different affective reactions to moral dilemmas as compared with younger adults. Results from 2 experiments indicated that older adults made significantly more deontological moral judgments. Mediation analyses revealed that the relationship between age and making more deontological moral judgments is partly explained by older adults exhibiting significantly more negative affective reactions and having more morally idealistic beliefs as compared with younger adults.

Age differences in financial decision making: The benefits of more experience and less negative emotions

“…Older age was unrelated to motivation to think hard about complex problems and numeracy. As discussed in more detail below, the latter is in line with other studies of relatively educated samples (Bruine de Bruin et al, ; Låg et al, ; McNair et al, in press; Sinayev et al, ; Weller et al, ).…”

“…As a result, the range of numeracy scores may have been restricted, thus limiting our ability to uncover correlations of numeracy with, say, age (see also Sinayev et al, ). Other studies with relatively educated samples have also found no significant correlation between numeracy and age (Bruine de Bruin et al, ; Låg et al, ; McNair et al, in press; Sinayev et al, ; Weller et al, ). Yet the tradition to recruit younger adults from among college students and older adults from the community may have confounded older age with lower educational attainment and therefore exaggerated the correlation between older age and lower numeracy skills (Strough, Parker, & Bruine de Bruin, ).…”

“…These findings potentially reflect the cognitive demands of numerical computations (Del Missier, Mäntylä, & Bruine de Bruin, ), which may be more difficult for older adults due to age‐related decline in fluid cognitive ability (Bruine de Bruin et al, ; Park & Reuter‐Lorenz, ). However, numeracy does not consistently correlate with age across studies (e.g., Bruine de Bruin, Wallin, Parker, Strough, & Hanmer, ; Låg, Bauger, Lindberg, & Friborg, ; McNair, Okan, Hadjichristidis, & Bruine de Bruin, in press; Sinayev, Peters, Tusler, & Fraenkel, ; Weller et al, ). In relatively well‐educated internet samples, the range of numeracy scores may be restricted, thus limiting the potential for uncovering correlations between numeracy and age (see Sinayev et al, ).…”

Hunger Bias or Gut Instinct? Responses to Judgments of Harm Depending on Visceral State Versus Intuitive Decision-Making

“…In R4, we found age and sex were the strongest predictors of harm aversion but not outcome-maximization tendencies. As found previously, older participants and female participants were most likely to reject causing harm (Armstrong et al, 2019;McNair et al, 2019), but these age and sex differences did not extend to moral acceptability ratings -a distinction that has not been clarified before. There was partial support for a role of state anxiety in predicting harm-aversion tendencies, with more anxious people more likely to accept causing harm regardless of the outcomes.…”

“…We also explored the influence of sex, age, and individual differences in anxiety for predicting moral judgments. Women and older people are more likely to reject harmful action in hypothetical moral dilemmas (Armstrong et al, 2019;McNair et al, 2019). Anxiety is associated with heightened cardiac arousal, which can affect how we process threatening information (Garfinkel and Critchley, 2016), and is a psychological correlate of both hunger (Herman et al, 1987) and IS (Domschke et al, 2010).…”