Aging is associated with maladaptive episodic memory-guided social decision-making

Abstract

Older adults are frequent targets and victims of financial fraud. They may be especially susceptible to revictimization because of age-related changes in both episodic memory and social motivation. Here we examined these factors in a context where adaptive social decision-making requires intact associative memory for previous social interactions. Older adults made more maladaptive episodic memory-guided social decisions but not only because of poorer associative memory. Older adults were biased toward remembering people as being fair, while young adults were biased toward remembering people as being unfair. Holding memory constant, older adults engaged more with people that were familiar (regardless of the nature of the previous interaction), whereas young adults were prone to avoiding others that they remembered as being unfair. Finally, older adults were more influenced by facial appearances, choosing to interact with social partners that looked more generous, even though those perceptions were inconsistent with prior experience.

The Social Iowa Gambling Task (S-IGT): A Novel Paradigm for Investigating Social Learning and Decision Making

“…This initial performance difference appeared to be due to a reliance on facial cues to make initial decisions on who to trust. This finding is consistent with a wealth of evidence that facial trustworthiness affects social decisions (Castle et al, 2012;Chang et al, 2010;Todorov et al, 2009;van 't Wout & Sanfey, 2008;Winston et al, 2002) and generally supports the notion of schema reliance (Ebner et al, 2009;Lempert et al, 2022;Mather & Johnson, 2003). Choosing a trustworthy-looking face in the congruent condition of the S-IGT always resulted in profits and little to no losses since the trustworthy face was paired with an advantageous deck.…”

“…Studies have shown that nonverbal cues like facial expressions and body language can greatly influence trust decisions in repeated interactions, albeit their exact impact is not fully understood yet (Eckel & Wilson, 2003;Morris et al, 1998;Willis & Todorov, 2006). This brings to light the concept of schemas-mental frameworks shaped by past experiences (i.e., based on "schemata"; Bartlett, 1932)-and how they can lead to biases in information processing and decision making (Ebner et al, 2009;Lempert et al, 2022;Mather & Johnson, 2003;Owens et al, 1979).…”

Age-group Differences in Trust-related Decision-making and Learning

“…For example, older adults recruit brain regions associated with mentalizing and memory to a greater extent than younger adults during trust-related decision-making [36]. Additionally, older adults may be especially vulnerable to maladaptive memory-dependent social decisions [76]. Investigating neural responses during social decision-making is outside of the scope of the present study, but critical for the future to understand the neural underpinnings of age-group differences in behavior.…”

Social content is prioritized in episodic memory

“…Our study builds on recent findings highlighting general preferences for social content in both associative (Stewardson et al, 2023) and recognition (Jimenez and Meyer, 2024) memory with older adults being more biased to use familiarity judgements when making decisions about others (Lempert et al, 2022). Yet, none of this work examined how social content is bound to other event elements in episodic memory.…”