Beyond money: Nonmonetary prosociality across adulthood

Personality aspects and proenvironmental attitudes

OBJECTIVE

Climate change is a serious threat. Personality psychologists can help address this threat by understanding what kind of people tend to endorse proenvironmental attitudes and engage in sustainable behavior. Previous research supports reliable associations between proenvironmental attitudes and personality traits. However, this research has generally aggregated different kinds of attitudes into a single composite and has focused on the domain level of personality traits.

METHOD

This study explored how 10 lower-order aspects of the Big Five personality traits were related to eight different proenvironmental attitudes in three convenience samples from the United States (N = 1234; 1000) and the United Kingdom (N = 538).

RESULTS

All five trait domains were related to at least one proenvironmental attitude across all three samples. Seven of eight proenvironmental attitudes could be predicted by one or more traits in all three samples. We also found evidence that the Openness aspect of Openness to Experience was a more consistent predictor of proenvironmental attitudes than the Intellect aspect. In contrast, there was little benefit in distinguishing between the aspects of other trait domains. We did not find evidence that age or political orientation moderated the associations between proenvironmental attitudes and personality.

CONCLUSION

Results point to the need for more fine-grained research on individual differences in proenvironmental attitudes and behavior.

Increases in prosociality across adulthood: The pure-altruism hypothesis

A growing body of research suggests that prosocial behavior increases across adulthood. Yet, whether these age differences reflect "pure altruistic" or selfish motives, or the developmental mechanisms that underlie them, are largely unknown. Within a value-based decision framework, pure altruistic tendencies can be measured and distinguished from impure altruistic motives through neural-level information. Indeed, age differences in donations appear to be driven by a genuine concern for the well-being of others. Candidate mechanisms behind such pure altruistic changes need to show documented age differences and evidence of causal links to prosocial behavior. As examples, we discuss how three factors that meet these criteria--social norms, mood, and cognitive functioning--might explain age differences in pure altruistic tendencies.

Do older adults make more risky decisions in the Hungry Donkey Task or in the Iowa Gambling Task?

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Hungry Donkey Task (HDT) are well-known tasks employed to assess decisions under ambiguity. Although the two tasks are equal in terms of wins and losses, they differ in terms of the recipient: while in the IGT participants make decisions for themselves, in the HDT decisions are made to help a hungry donkey. Decisions for themselves versus another one in a situation of ambiguity are particularly important in the field of aging because of older adults' changes in motivational and other-oriented behavior. The present study aimed to test whether older adults make different decisions under ambiguity for themselves than for another one (i.e., the hungry donkey) as compared to younger adults. Forty-five young adults (M = 23.31; SD = 1.58) and 45 older adults (M = 72.47; SD = 5.49) performed the IGT and the HDT. In addition, participants performed tasks on working memory, set-shifting, and inhibition. Results showed age-related differences in the HDT but not in the IGT. Older adults, compared to younger adults, made disadvantageous decisions to help the hungry donkey as compared to themselves. Interestingly, this pattern of results is not explained by the age-related decline in cognitive functioning. The findings seem to suggest that older adults' decisions made under the condition of ambiguity are affected by motivational and emotional changes associated with aging.

The Concept of Prosociality in Later Life and Its Dimensions: A Scoping Review

Objective: The aim of this study was to clarify various aspects and dimensions of the prosociality concept in later life as an important concept that gains significance in people as they age. This concept has been expressed through a variety of dimensions in different studies. Method : This is a scoping review of the relevant literature on the concept of prosociality and its dimensions in later life, including quantitative and qualitative studies. The required data were collected from Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, ProQuest, and Google Scholar databases between the years 1987 and 2022. Results: First, 877 articles were identified, and after the screening phase, 57 eligible studies were reviewed. Two main categories, prosocial dispositions and prosocial behaviors, and seven subcategories were extracted. The subcategories of prosocial dispositions include empathy, prosocial norms, innate tendencies, and generative desires. Prosocial behaviors subcategories include informal spontaneous helping, formal planned helping, and pro-environmental behaviors. Conclusion: The various aspects and dimensions of the prosociality concept in later life identified in this study can be used as a basis for assessing and planning the promotion of prosociality among older adults.

Determinants of Social Cognitive Aging: Predicting Resilience and Risk

This review focuses on conceptual and empirical research on determinants of social cognitive aging. We present an integrated model [the social cognitive resource (SCoRe) framework] to organize the literature and describe how social cognitive resilience is determined jointly by capacity and motivational resources. We discuss how neurobiological aging, driven by genetic and environmental influences, is associated with broader sensory, neural, and physiological changes that are direct determinants of capacity as well as indirect determinants of motivation via their influence on expectation of loss versus reward and cognitive effort valuation. Research is reviewed that shows how contextual factors, such as relationship status, familiarity, and practice, are fundamental to understanding the availability of both types of resource. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of social cognitive change in late adulthood for everyday social functioning and with recommendations for future research.

Adult age differences in remembering gain- and loss-related intentions

Motivational and emotional changes across adulthood have a profound impact on cognition. In this registered report, we conducted an experimental investigation of motivational influence on remembering intentions after a delay (prospective memory; PM) in younger, middle-aged, and older adults, using gain- and loss-framing manipulations. The present study examined for the first time whether motivational framing in a PM task has different effects on younger and older adults' PM performance (N = 180; age range: 18-85 years) in a controlled laboratory setting. Based on lifespan theories of motivation, we assumed that the prevention of losses becomes more relevant with increasing age: We expected that older adults show relatively higher PM performance in a task with loss-related consequences following PM failure than in a task in which successful PM leads to gains. The opposite pattern of performance was expected for younger adults. The findings suggest that the relevance of reward and positive gain-related consequences for successful remembering appears to decrease with age. As hypothesised, a motivational framing × age interaction indicated that age differences in memory performance were smaller with loss-related than gain-related consequences, supporting a loss-prevention view on motivated cognition.

Age-Related Changes in the Role of Social Motivation: Implications for Healthy Aging

Prior research has established the importance of social relations and social embeddedness for motivation in healthy aging. Thus, social orientation appears to be essential for understanding healthy aging. This article focuses particularly on age-related changes in goals concerning social orientation, such as increased prioritization of emotional goals, increased prosociality/altruistic motives, generativity, and ego transcendence. We then consider open questions regarding gaps in the links between goals related to social orientation and healthy aging, as well as the implications of theories and research on social goals for leveraging motivation to promote healthy aging. In particular, interventions to promote healthy behavior in late life may be most effective when they match the themes of older adults' strivings to find meaning and purpose in their personal goals.