Decision-Making Over the Lifespan: How Memory Affects Preferences

描述（由申请人提供）：该提案认为，我们可以利用我们对生命周期中记忆变化的了解，来了解随着人们年龄的增长，决策是如何变化的。拟议的研究集中在四个重要的，强大的和经过充分研究的决策现象，是有问题的年轻人，可能是更强的老年人：禀赋效应，跨期选择的不对称性，默认效应和锚定。使用一种称为“偏好作为记忆”（PAM）的决策方法，我们开发了人们如何在这些情况下做出判断和选择的模型，并描述了记忆过程在偏好构建过程中的作用，特别是干扰的作用，这是一种随着生命历程而变化的记忆特征。然后，我们提出实验来测试这些模型，使用个人管理和基于网络的实验，将老年人与年轻人的偏好模式进行对比。使用网络可以让人们更快地接触到更广泛的老年人和年轻人。亲自管理的实验允许更大的实验控制和微调的新方法和程序。我们的实验将采用测量方法的选择和偏好在定义明确的决策任务，沿着的工具，用于测量信息检索在决策过程中的隐式和显式。通过进一步测量在一系列其他认知领域的表现，我们也将能够测试替代中介机制之间的偏好现象，将在研究中。将审查的决策现象对老年人的福利有影响。例如，如果老年人表现出更大的禀赋效应（因此更大的损失厌恶），他们可能更依恋某些财产，避免改变，即使这可能不符合他们的最佳利益。由于拟议的研究生成了记忆表征和过程如何影响决策的过程模型，因此它为开发可以帮助和改善决策的干预措施提供了方向-这是试图改变重要决策的老龄化社会的重要贡献（例如，关于养老金投资和医疗保健选择）从政府机构到个人。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal argues that we can leverage what we know about memory changes over the lifespan to understand how decision-making changes as people get older. The proposed research concentrates on four important, robust and well-studied decision phenomena that are problematic for younger adults and may be stronger in older adults: The endowment effect, asymmetries in intertemporal choice, default effects, and anchoring. Using an approach to decision-making called "Preferences-as- Memories" (PAM), we develop models of how people make judgments and choices in these situations and describe the role of memory processes in the process of preference construction, particularly the role of interference, a memory characteristic which changes over the life course. We then propose experiments to test these models using both personally administered and web-based experiments that will contrast the pattern of preferences exhibited by older adults with those of younger adults. Using the web allows one to reach a broad population of older and younger adults more quickly. Personally administered experiments allow for greater experimental control and for a fine-tuning of new methodologies and procedures. Our experiments will employ methods for measuring choices and preferences in well-defined decision-making tasks, along with tools for measuring information retrieval during decision-making both implicitly and explicitly. By further measuring performance in a range of additional cognitive domains, we will also be able to test between alternative mediating mechanisms for the preference phenomena that will be under study. The decision-making phenomena that will be examined have implications for the welfare of older adults. If, for example, older people show greater endowment effects (and therefore greater loss aversion), they may be more attached to some possessions and avoid change, even when this may not be in their best interest. Because the proposed research generates process models of how memory representations and processes affect decisions, it provides directions for the development of interventions that can aid and improve decisions - an important contribution in an aging society that tries to shift important decisions (e.g., on pension investments and health care choices) from government agencies to individuals.