Age differences in the effect of framing on risky choice: A meta-analysis.

Abstract

The framing of decision scenarios in terms of potential gains versus losses has been shown to influence choice preferences between sure and risky options. Normative cognitive changes associated with aging have been known to affect decision-making, which has led to a number of studies investigating the influence of aging on the effect of framing. Mata, Josef, Samanez-Larkin, and Hertwig (2011) systematically reviewed the available literature using a meta-analytic approach, but did not include tests of homogeneity nor subsequent moderator variable analyses. The current review serves to extend the previous analysis to include such tests as well as update the pool of studies available for analysis. Results for both positively and negatively framed conditions were reviewed using two meta-analyses encompassing data collected from 3,232 subjects across 18 studies. Deviating from the previous results, the current analysis finds a tendency for younger adults to choose the risky option more often than older adults for positively framed items. Moderator variable analyses find this effect to likely be driven by the specific decision scenario, showing a significant effect with younger adults choosing the risky option more often in small-amount financial and large-amount mortality-based scenarios. For negatively framed items, the current review found no overall age difference in risky decision making, confirming the results from the prior meta-analysis. Moderator variable analyses conducted to address heterogeneity found younger adults to be more likely than older adults to choose the risky option for negatively framed high-amount mortality-based decision scenarios. Practical implications for older adults are discussed.

Individual classification of strong risk attitudes: An application across lottery types and age groups

“…Both studies show that very few individuals express (strong) risk attitudes that are in line with the reflection effect -a mainstay finding in the field of judgment and decision making (Kühberger, 1998). Furthermore, we show that for some lottery-pair types, older adults appear to be more (strong) risk seeking than younger adults, again in contrast to past findings that have adopted the weak definition of risk taking (e.g., Best & Charness 2015). These results demonstrate the limited generalizability of weak risk attitudes as well as yield new insights into phenomena such as the reflection effect in the study of individual and age differences.…”

“…This prominence is such that important lines of research have relied upon a weak definition of risk attitudes and the reflection effect. For example, in the study of age differences in decision making, many researchers have focused on whether the reflection effect increases with age (e.g., Mather et al 2012;Tymula et al 2013; for a review and meta-analysis, see Best & Charness, 2015). Overall, results indicate that older adults focus more on maintenance of the status quo and loss avoidance, leading to an increase of the reflection effect (see Best & Charness 2015).…”

“…Consequently, we asked whether past results generalize to choices between two options that involve some degree of risk. In particular, we focused on whether the reflection effect (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) and older adults' reduced risk taking relative to younger adults (e.g., Best & Charness 2015) generalize to such situations involving two risky options with binary outcomes. Among several definitions of risk attitudes (Aven, 2012), we focused on one for which there is a well-established theoretical foundation (Luce 2000;2010a, b).…”

“…The new experiment enables us to attempt to replicate the risk-attitude patterns found in the study by Davis-Stober and Brown (2013) as well as test whether patterns of age differences that have been documented in previous aging research studies (Best & Charness, 2015) extend to the strong definition of risk taking.…”

“…But very often, researchers rely on a socalled weak definition of risk attitude (Pratt, 1964), which is based on individuals' preferences towards the presence versus absence of risk, instantiated by a lottery and its expected value, respectively. In this paper, we aim to show that adopting an alternative definition can have important implications for understanding common patterns of results that have been the target of considerable research, such as the reflection effect (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) or individual and age differences in risky choice (Best & Charness, 2015;Mata et al, 2011). More specifically, the goal of the present paper is to argue for a wider use of a strong definition of risk, which focuses on attitudes towards degrees of risk.…”