The Relationship Between Cognitive Abilities and the Decision-Making Process: The Moderating Role of Self-Relevance

Purpose in Life and Cognition Interact to Impact Healthcare and Financial Decision Making in Old Age

Objectives: Little is known about the contribution of positive psychological factors, such as purpose in life, to healthcare and financial decision making in aging. Here, we examined the relationship between purpose and decision making and tested the hypothesis that purpose benefits decision making, particularly when cognition is limited. Methods: Participants were 1081 community-based older adults without dementia. Healthcare and financial decision making was measured via a 12-item performance-based instrument. Purpose was measured via a 10-item scale. Results: In a linear regression model adjusted for age, sex, and education, higher global cognition was associated with better performance on the decision making measure, as expected. Purpose was not directly related to decision making. However, the interaction of purpose with cognition was significant, such that greater purpose was associated with better decision making among persons with lower cognition. Discussion: Purpose in life may promote better decision making among older adults with lower cognition.

Analysis of the Relationship Between Psychological Well-Being and Decision Making in Adolescent Students

Adolescents are frequently faced with situations in which they have to make decisions by choosing from a range of possible alternatives. In such circumstances, individual, social, and environmental conditions have an impact on the choice of the final decision in light of the various options presented. The main objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between the psychological well-being of adolescent students and their decision-making style. The research method used corresponds to an ex post facto, quantitative, transversal, correlational, and descriptive design, with an initial sample of 1,262 students from the Autonomous Community of Madrid, Spain, aged 13–19. A subsequent resampling of 385 participants was extracted from the initial sample by proportional allocation to strata (according to the levels of the variables gender, academic year, and educational institution classification) to guarantee the representativeness of the population data. Data collection uses the first Spanish adaptation of Ryff's Psychological well-being Scale and the Flinders Adolescent Decision Making Questionnaire, adapted by Friedman and Mann. The data shows that greater use of adaptive decision-making strategies correlates significantly with greater psychological well-being. In contrast, the correlation is high and negative at the intersection of the maladaptive decision-making variables and psychological well-being.

The impacts of task relevance and cognitive load on adults' decision information search

Higher relevance may increase older adults' engagement in cognitively demanding activities; however, whether this effect will maintain when available cognitive resources are limited? Consequently, we investigated the joint impact of task relevance and cognitive load on older and younger adults' decision search behaviors. We adopted a 2 (age: young/old) × 2 (cognitive load: without load/with load) × 2 (task relevance: high/low) mixed design. Sixty-one younger and 63 older adults completed high-relevance and low-relevance decisions. Our results revealed that older (vs. younger) adults took more time and more alternative-based search before decision-making. Both age groups sampled less information with an additional memory task. Additionally, they spent more time and effort to sample more information on high-relevance (vs. low-relevance) decisions; however, such differences disappeared when with an additional memory task. Task relevance promoted both age groups' search engagement, but this effect was subjected to their available cognitive resources.