Age matters: The effect of regret and loss aversion on cultured meat acceptance

Cultured meat shows great promise as a more sustainable alternative to conventional meat consumption. However, consumer acceptance of cultured meat remains a great challenge as studies indicate a general reluctance to adopt this product. Notably, while existing literature has provided various factors influencing consumer acceptance of cultured meat, there is a limited focus on the use of affective cues. The present research examines the impact of regret appeal on consumers' willingness to try cultured meat. In two experimental studies, the authors investigate (1) the interactive effect between regret and age on willingness to try cultured meat, and (2) the role of loss aversion as a mediating factor between regret and willingness to try cultured meat. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of regret appeal in increasing consumers' willingness to try cultured meat, particularly among older populations. This is because older populations exhibit higher levels of loss aversion. The present study is the first to shed light on the interactive effect of regret and age in influencing sustainable product acceptance. Furthermore, the study establishes the first empirical evidence to demonstrate that loss aversion is a valid self-regulating strategy adopted to cope with the feeling of regret in a consumption context.

Adult age differences in value-based decision making

A better understanding of age-related differences in judgment and decision making is important from both theoretical and applied perspectives. In this review, we focus on value-based decisions across adulthood and specifically on how loss aversion (a relatively stronger weight of losses than gains on decisions) and the relative motivational impact of gains and losses may change with aging. In doing so, we will also cover recent findings about the effects of gain or loss incentives on performance in cognitive tasks that involve attention, learning, and remembering. We point out open questions and critical moderating variables for future theorizing and research.

Pay One or Pay All? The Role of Incentive Schemes in Decision Making Across Adulthood

OBJECTIVES

This research addresses how younger and older adults' decisions and evaluations of gains and losses are affected by the way in which monetary incentives are provided. We compared 2 common incentive schemes in decision making: pay one (only a single decision is incentivized) and pay all (incentives across all decisions are accumulated).

METHOD

Younger adults (18-36 years; n = 147) and older adults (60-89 years; n = 139) participated in either a pay-one or pay-all condition and made binary choices between two-outcome monetary lotteries in gain, loss, and mixed domains. We analyzed participants' decision quality, risk taking, and psychometric test scores. Computational modeling of cumulative prospect theory served to measure sensitivity to outcomes and probabilities, loss aversion, and choice sensitivity.

RESULTS

Decision quality and risk aversion were higher in the gain than mixed or loss domain, but unaffected by age. Loss aversion was higher, and choice sensitivity was lower in older than younger adults. In the pay-one condition, the value functions were more strongly curved, and choice sensitivity was higher than in the pay-all condition.

DISCUSSION

An opportunity of accumulating incentives has similar portfolio effects on younger and older adults' decisions. In general, people appear to decide less cautiously in pay-all than pay-one scenarios. The impact of different incentive schemes should be carefully considered in aging and decision research.

Age and Framing Effects in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART)

OBJECTIVES

Prior research has documented age differences in risky decisions and indicates that they are susceptible to gain versus loss framing. However, previous studies focused on 'decisions from description' that explicitly spell out the probabilities involved. The present study expands this literature by examining the effects of framing on age differences in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), a widely used and ecologically valid measure of experience-based risky decision-making that involves pumping a virtual balloon.

METHOD

In a pre-registered study, younger (aged 18-30, n =129) and older adults (aged 60 and over, n=125) were randomly assigned to either a gain version of the BART, where pumping the balloon added monetary gains, or a loss version, where pumping the balloon avoided monetary losses.

RESULTS

We found a significant age by frame interaction on risk-taking: in the loss frame, older adults pumped more frequently and experienced more popped balloons than younger adults, whereas in the gain frame no significant age differences were found. Total performance on the BART did not vary by age or frame. Supplementary analyses indicated that age differences in pumping rates were most pronounced at the beginning of the BART and leveled off in subsequent trials. Controlling for age differences in motivation, personality, and cognition did not account for age differences in risk-taking.

DISCUSSION

In combination, findings suggest that age differences in risk-taking on the BART are more pronounced when the task context emphasizes avoiding losses rather than achieving gains.

Age Influences Loss Aversion Through Effects on Posterior Cingulate Cortical Thickness

Decision-making strategies shift during normal aging and can profoundly affect wellbeing. Although overweighing losses compared to gains, termed "loss aversion," plays an important role in choice selection, the age trajectory of this effect and how it may be influenced by associated changes in brain structure remain unclear. We therefore investigated the relationship between age and loss aversion, and tested for its mediation by cortical thinning in brain regions that are susceptible to age-related declines and are implicated in loss aversion - the insular, orbitofrontal, and anterior and posterior cingulate cortices. Healthy participants (n = 106, 17-54 years) performed the Loss Aversion Task. A subgroup (n = 78) provided structural magnetic resonance imaging scans. Loss aversion followed a curvilinear trajectory, declining in young adulthood and increasing in middle-age, and thinning of the posterior cingulate cortex mediated this trajectory. The findings suggest that beyond a threshold in middle adulthood, atrophy of the posterior cingulate cortex influences loss aversion.

Differential focus on probability and losses between young and older adults in risky decision-making

We examined young and older adults' use of descriptive information about risk (i.e., probability and expected value) in financial decision-making. In Experiment 1, participants chose between lotteries in pairs of bets that offered either two risky gains or one risky gain and one sure gain. Whereas they showed a strong and indiscriminate preference for high-probability gambles in risky-risky pairs, they selected sure options at high rates and risky options at low rates in risky-sure pairs, with slightly stronger effects in older relative to young adults due to age differences in ability. Experiment 2 involved the same task but in terms of losses. Participants, especially older adults, preferred low-probability gambles not accounted for by age differences in ability. Results suggest minimal consideration of expected value and a strong focus on probabilities in decision-making. They also suggest that cognitive ability and chronic goals differentially influence age effects depending on risk context.

How does decisional capacity evolve with normal cognitive aging: systematic review of the literature

PURPOSE

Aging is associated with increased needs related to complex decisions, particularly in medical and social issues. However, the complexity of decision-making involves many neurological functions and structures which are potentially altered by cognitive aging.

METHODOLOGY

A systematic review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines to examine changes in decision-making occurring in normal cognitive aging. The keywords "decision making" and "normal aging" were used to find the clinical studies and literature reviews focused on these changes.

RESULTS

A total of 97 articles were considered in the review, and ultimately 40 articles were selected, including 30 studies and 10 literature reviews. The data from these studies were of uneven quality and too disparate to allow meta-analysis according to PRISMA criteria. Nevertheless, a key result of the analysis is the decrease of processing speed with aging. In ambiguous decision-making situations, the alteration of the ventromedial system is associated with changes in motivation profiles. These changes can be compensated by experience. However, difficulties arise for older adults in the case of one-off decisions, which are very common in the medical or medico-social domains.

CONCLUSIONS

Cognitive aging is associated with a slowdown in processing speed of decision-making, especially in ambiguous situations. However, decision-making processes which are based on experience and cases in which sufficient time is available are less affected by aging. These results highlight the relativity of decision-making capacities in cognitive aging.

Strive to Win or Not to Lose? Age-Related Differences in Framing Effects on Effort-Based Decision-Making

Objectives

This study sought to assess how framing effects modulate age-related differences in effort-based decision-making. Consistent with the selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) model’s loss prevention account of aging, we predicted that older adults would be more willing to select high-effort options in loss contexts than gain contexts.

Method

Older and younger adults completed the effort expenditure for rewards task (EEfRT) in either a gain or loss context. The EEfRT is an effort-based decision-making paradigm in which participants choose between a low-effort, “easy” option and a high-effort, “hard” option for several trials. The probability and value of an outcome varies on a trial-by-trial basis.

Results

The results supported our prediction and the SOC model. Older adults chose more high-effort, difficult options in loss frames than gain frames. Older adults also chose more low-effort, easy options than younger adults in gain contexts, but did not differ from younger adults in loss contexts.

Discussion

These findings demonstrate that framing effects impact older adults’ effort-based decisions. Older adults appear willing to incur a greater “cost” in the form of effort to prevent a loss than to attain a reward.

Age, Loss Minimization, and the Role of Probability for Decision-Making

BACKGROUND

Older adults are stereotypically considered to be risk averse compared to younger age groups, although meta-analyses on age and the influence of gain/loss framing on risky choices have not found empirical evidence for age differences in risk-taking.

OBJECTIVE

The current study extends the investigation of age differences in risk preference by including analyses on the effect of the probability of a risky option on choices in gain versus loss situations.

METHODS

Participants (n = 130 adults aged 19-80 years) chose between a certain option and a risky option of varying probability in gain- and loss-framed gambles with actual monetary outcomes.

RESULTS

Only younger adults displayed an overall framing effect. Younger and older adults responded differently to probability fluctuations depending on the framing condition. Older adults were more likely to choose the risky option as the likelihood of avoiding a larger loss increased and as the likelihood of a larger gain decreased. Younger adults responded with the opposite pattern: they were more likely to choose the risky option as the likelihood of a larger gain increased and as the likelihood of avoiding a (slightly) larger loss decreased.

CONCLUSION

Results suggest that older adults are more willing to select a risky option when it increases the likelihood that larger losses be avoided, whereas younger adults are more willing to select a risky option when it allows for slightly larger gains. This finding supports expectations based on theoretical accounts of goal orientation shifting away from securing gains in younger adulthood towards maintenance and avoiding losses in older adulthood. Findings are also discussed in respect to the affective enhancement perspective and socioemotional selectivity theory.

Who Dares, Who Errs? Disentangling Cognitive and Motivational Roots of Age Differences in Decisions Under Risk

We separate for the first time the roles of cognitive and motivational factors in shaping age differences in decision making under risk. Younger and older adults completed gain, loss, and mixed-domain choice problems as well as measures of cognitive functioning and affect. The older adults’ decision quality was lower than the younger adults’ in the loss domain, and this age difference was attributable to the older adults’ lower cognitive abilities. In addition, the older adults chose the more risky option more often than the younger adults in the gain and mixed domains; this difference in risk aversion was attributable to less pronounced negative affect among the older adults. Computational modeling with a hierarchical Bayesian implementation of cumulative prospect theory revealed that the older adults had higher response noise and more optimistic decision weights for gains than did the younger adults. Moreover, the older adults showed no loss aversion, a finding that supports a positivity-focus (rather than a loss-prevention) view of motivational reorientation in older age.

Altered Value Coding in the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Healthy Older Adults

Previous work suggests that aging is associated with changes in risk taking but less is known about their underlying neural basis, such as the potential age differences in the neural processing of value and risk. The goal of the present study was to investigate adult age differences in functional neural responses in a naturalistic risk-taking task. Twenty-six young adults and 27 healthy older adults completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Young and older adults showed similar overt risk-taking behavior. Group comparison of neural activity in response to risky vs. control stimuli revealed similar patterns of activation in the bilateral striatum, anterior insula (AI) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Group comparison of parametrically modulated activity in response to continued pumping similarly revealed comparable results for both age groups in the AI and, potentially, the striatum, yet differences emerged for regional activity in the vmPFC. At whole brain level, insular, striatal and vmPFC activation was predictive of behavioral risk taking for young but not older adults. The current results are interpreted and discussed as preserved neural tracking of risk and reward in the AI and striatum, respectively, but altered value coding in the vmPFC in the two age groups. The latter finding points toward older adults exhibiting differential vmPFC-related integration and value coding. Furthermore, neural activation holds differential predictive validity for behavioral risk taking in young and older adults.

The role of cognitive abilities in decisions from experience: Age differences emerge as a function of choice set size

People seldom enjoy access to summarized information about risky options before making a decision. Instead, they may search for information and learn about environmental contingencies-thus making decisions from experience. Aging is associated with notable deficits in learning and memory-but do these translate into poorer decisions from experience? We report three studies that used a sampling paradigm to investigate younger (M=24 years) and older (M=71 years) adults' decisions from experience. In Study 1 (N=121) participants made 12 decisions between pairs of payoff distributions in the lab. Study 2 (N=70) implemented the same paradigm using portable devices, collecting 84 decisions per individual over a week. Study 3 (N=84) extended the sampling paradigm by asking participants to make 12 decisions between two, four, and eight payoff distributions (in the lab). Overall, the behavioral results suggest that younger and older adults are relatively similar in how they search and what they choose when facing two payoff distributions (Studies 1 and 2). With an increasing number of payoff distributions, however, age differences emerged (Study 3). A modeling analysis on the level of individual participants showed that a simple delta-learning rule model best described the learning processes of most participants. To the extent that ongoing updating processes unfold relatively automatically and effortlessly, older adults may be liberated from the detrimental consequences of cognitive aging in the case of decisions from experience with few decision options. We discuss implications for research on decisions from experience and choice performance over the lifespan.