Back
Full-text
Journal article

Age differences in risky choice: a meta-analysis.

  • 2011-10-26
Published in:
  • Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. - 2011
Adolescent
Adult
Age Factors
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Aging
Choice Behavior
Decision Making
Female
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Risk-Taking
Young Adult
English Does risk taking change as a function of age? We conducted a systematic literature search and found 29 comparisons between younger and older adults on behavioral tasks thought to measure risk taking (N= 4,093). The reports relied on various tasks differing in several respects, such as the amount of learning required or the choice framing (gains vs. losses). The results suggest that age-related differences vary considerably as a function of task characteristics, in particular the learning requirements of the task. In decisions from experience, age-related differences in risk taking were a function of decreased learning performance: older adults were more risk seeking compared to younger adults when learning led to risk-avoidant behavior, but were more risk averse when learning led to risk-seeking behavior. In decisions from description, younger adults and older adults showed similar risk-taking behavior for the majority of the tasks, and there were no clear age-related differences as a function of gain/loss framing. We discuss limitations and strengths of past research and provide suggestions for future work on age-related differences in risk taking.
Language
  • English
Open access status
green
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/98411
Statistics
Document views: 59 File downloads:
  • Full-text: 0