Inequity aversion in old age: An outcome bias in older adults’ socio-economic decisions

Age-Related Differences in Moral Judgment: The Role of Probability Judgments

Research suggests that moral evaluations change during adulthood. Older adults (75+) tend to judge accidentally harmful acts more severely than younger adults do, and this age-related difference is in part due to the greater negligence older adults attribute to the accidental harmdoers. Across two studies (N = 254), we find support for this claim and report the novel discovery that older adults' increased attribution of negligence, in turn, is associated with a higher perceived likelihood that the accident would occur. We propose that, because older adults perceive accidents as more likely than younger adults do, they condemn the agents and their actions more and even infer that the agents' omission to exercise due care is intentional. These findings refine our understanding of the cognitive processes underpinning moral judgment in older adulthood and highlight the role of subjective probability judgments in negligence attribution.

Younger adults are more prosocial than older adults in economic decision making results from the give and take game

The present study was designed to investigate the disadvantageous and advantageous inequity aversion of young and older adults in situations which allowed them to maximize or minimize payoff inequalities. Given the very limited evidence regarding an actual age-related effect on inequity aversion, the purpose of this study was to examine this question using an economic game, "the Give-and-Take Game", which is able to circumvent certain limitations of the Ultimatum Game, to evaluate inequity aversion (i.e., a same behaviour which can be induced by opposite motivations: prosocial vs. pro-self vs. altruistic orientations). In the "Give-and-Take Game", a sum of money was randomly distributed between the participant and a dummy player. These distributions created monetary inequalities, advantageous either for the participant (to examine advantageous inequity aversion) or for the other player (to examine disadvantageous inequity aversion). Different response options were proposed to the participants to either maximize or minimize payoff inequalities between the players. This procedure not only allowed to differentiate individual's profiles with more prosocial vs. pro-self vs. altruistic orientations, but also to examine age-related effects on these profiles. The results showed that older adults showed a more important pro-self orientation compared to their younger counterparts. They more frequently selected the options which maximized their own payoffs and were less averse to advantageous inequity compared to young adults. In contrast, young adults showed a similar level of advantageous and disadvantageous inequity aversion. Older adults focused on the economic and competitive dimension of the game, which may have motivated them to maximize their own payoffs. Conversely, young adults took into account the social dimension of the game, focusing on a fair monetary distribution.

Intent-Based Moral Judgment in Old Age

OBJECTIVES

Recent studies support the idea of an intent-to-outcome shift in moral judgments with age. We further assessed whether a reduced reliance on intentions is associated with aging in a preregistered study with 73 younger (20-41 years) and 79 older (70-84 years) adults, group-matched on education level.

METHOD

Participants were presented with a set of moral cases to evaluate, created by varying orthogonally the valence (neutral, negative) of the information regarding the agent's intentions and the action's outcomes.

RESULTS

The two age groups did not differ in the extent they relied on intentions in moral judgment.

DISCUSSION

These results suggest that an intent-to-outcome shift might not be found in all aging populations, challenging prevailing theories suggesting that aging is necessarily associated with a reduced reliance on intentions.

Age-related differences in Default Mode Network resting-state functional connectivity but not gray matter volume relate to sacrificial moral decision-making and working memory performance

Older adults make fewer utilitarian decisions than younger adults during sacrificial moral dilemmas, which are associated with age-related reductions in Default Mode Network resting-state functional connectivity. Decreases on tasks associated with fluid cognitive abilities, such as working memory capacity, are also associated with age-related Default Mode Network changes. Regions within this network demonstrate some of the greatest age-related gray matter atrophy. Age-related changes in structure and function of the Default Mode Network may be associated with poorer working memory capacity and reduced utilitarian moral decision-making. Alternatively, recent theories suggest that age-related changes to Default Mode Network function may be adaptive in the context of tasks that include socioemotional components. As such, reduced within-network resting-state functional connectivity of the Default Mode Network may be associated with differential outcomes in moral decision-making for younger and older adults. In the present study, there were no age-related differences in working memory capacity. Older adults were less likely than younger adults to indicate the utilitarian option when trials involved Instrumental harm. Generally, increased within-network resting-state functional connectivity of the Default Mode Network was associated with better working memory performance in both groups, and reduced bias to endorse the utilitarian option during Incidental dilemmas compared to Instrumental dilemmas in younger adults. Older adults with similar moral decision-making behavior to younger adults demonstrated increased coupling between Default Mode Network and Salience Network regions. These findings suggest that Default Mode Network functional integrity may be differentially associated with age-related changes to working memory capacity and sacrificial moral decision-making.