Cognitive and Emotional Sources of Wisdom in Decision Making Across the Lifespan

描述(由申请人提供)：在实验室中传统上观察到的表现缺陷与老年人在日常生活中表现出的一般能力之间存在着有趣的差异。与普通公众关于 老龄化--年龄带来智慧，年龄带来技能退化--研究发现，混合证据表明，与年轻人相比，老年人的决定可能更明智，也可能更不明智。一致的证据表明，情绪调节、对人际冲突的推理和结晶智力都随着年龄的增长而提高。然而，老年人处理新信息所需的认知能力也会下降，包括推理、分散注意力、处理速度和工作记忆--即所谓的流动智力。虽然流动智力下降对决策的影响是众所周知的，尤其是新奇的决策，但这项拟议的研究将研究结晶智力的哪些组成部分-涉及知识、经验和专业知识的一般智力的一部分-有助于老年人决策时的智慧。这个应用程序有两个具体目标。一是厘清晶化情报与决策的关系。之前的研究表明，较好的结晶智力可能会弥补老年人较差的流动智力，但我们对用于测量结晶智力的一般知识和词汇测试实际捕捉到的能力以及这些领域通用能力如何对跨领域的决策质量做出贡献知之甚少。例如，领域通用知识可以与领域特定(即，语义)知识相关，或者它可以替代随着年龄而提高的许多其他能力，包括领域特定过程专业知识(即，从实践中获得的自动处理能力)、领域通用原则(例如，知道寻求建议、消除占主导地位的备选方案和识别冗余信息)、以及决策的基于情感的方面(例如对情感信息源的依赖)。第二个目标是探索明确的智力与一种重要的、特定的决策技能之间的可能联系，情感预测，或预测什么将使我们快乐的能力。情感变量在决策过程中起着重要作用，而决策情感方面的年龄差异似乎对选择结果有重要影响。如果老年人做出的决定偏离了经济上的理性，他们可能会对自己的决定更满意，因为他们更善于预测自己对结果的感受。情感预测准确率的个体差异也可能受到其他能力的影响，这些能力随着年龄的变化而变化，包括液态智力和结晶智力的组成部分。我们研究对老年人福利有影响的决定，涉及范围广泛的领域，包括退休和医疗保健。所获得的研究见解将为能够帮助和改进决策的干预措施的发展提供方向--在老龄化社会中，这是一个重要的贡献，因为重大决策(例如，退休积累和支出以及医疗保健选择)越来越取决于个人。 与公共健康相关：通过了解结晶智力的个体和寿命差异的哪些组成部分会导致成年人在广泛的领域(包括退休和医疗保健)在经济和情感上做出更好的决定，拟议中的研究为制定干预措施提供了方向，这些干预措施可以帮助老年人做出决定并改善他们的福利。这些心理和行为经济干预措施为老龄化社会作出了重要贡献，因为老龄化社会日益将社会和个人的重要决策(例如，关于退休储蓄和储蓄以及医疗保健选择的决策)从政府机构转移到个人。流体智力“培训”有效性的证据薄弱(Owen等人，2010年)，这使得通过设计干预措施来寻找提高决策质量的替代途径变得重要，这些干预措施利用了影响与决策和选择相关的能力的结晶智力的组成部分。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): An intriguing discrepancy exists between the performance deficits traditionally observed in the laboratory and the general competencies that older adults exhibit in everyday life. Parallel to the general public's two conflicting views about aging-that age brings wisdom, and that age brings deteriorating skills-research has found mixed evidence showing that older adults' decisions can be both "wiser" and less wise compared to their younger counterparts. Convergent evidence suggests that emotional regulation, reasoning about interpersonal conflicts, and crystallized intelligence all improve with advanced age. However, older adults also suffer from declines in the cognitive abilities necessary for processing new information, including reasoning, dividing attention, processing speed, and working memory-i.e., what is known as fluid intelligence. Whereas the effects of declines in fluid intelligence on decisions, particularly novel ones, are well understood, the proposed research will examine what components of crystallized intelligence-the part of general intelligence that involves knowledge, experience, and expertise-contribute to wisdom in decision making in older adults. This application has two specific goals. The first is to clarify the relationship between crystallized intelligence and decision making. Previous work has shown that better crystallized intelligence may compensate for worse fluid intelligence in older adults, but we know little about what abilities the tests of general knowledge and vocabulary used to measures crystallized intelligence actually capture and how these domain-general abilities contribute to decision quality across domains. For example, domain-general knowledge may correlate with domain-specific (i.e., semantic) knowledge, or it may proxy for a number of other abilities that improve with age, including domain-specific process expertise (i.e., automatic processing ability gained from practice), domain-general principles (e.g., knowing to seek advice, eliminating dominated alternatives, and identifying redundant information), and emotion-based aspects of decision making (such as reliance on affective sources of information). The second goal is to explore the possible connection between crystallized intelligence and an important, specific kind of decision skill, affective forecasting, or the ability to predict what will make us happy. Affective variable play a major role in decision processes, and age differences in emotional aspects of decision-making would seem to have important implications for choice outcomes. If older adults make decisions that deviate from what is economically rational, they may nonetheless be happier with their decisions because they are better at predicting how they will feel about the outcomes. Individual differences in affective forecasting accuracy may also be influenced by other abilities that change with age, including components of both fluid and crystallized intelligence. We examine decisions that have implications for the welfare of older adults, across a wide range of domains, including retirement and healthcare. Research insights gained will provide directions for the development of interventions that can aid and improve decisions-an important contribution in an aging society when major decisions (e.g., retirement accumulation and spending and health care choices) are increasingly up to individuals. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: By understanding what components of individual and lifespan differences in crystallized intelligence lead adults across the lifespan to make better decisions-both economically and emotionally-across a wide range of domains (including retirement and healthcare), the proposed research provides directions for the development of interventions that can aid decisions and improve the welfare of older adults. These psychological and behavioral economic interventions offer an important contribution in an aging society that is increasingly shifting socially and individually important decisions (e.g., on retirement saving and decumulation and on health care choices) from government agencies to individuals. The tenuous evidence for the effectiveness of fluid intelligence "training" (Owen et al., 2010) makes it important to find alternative avenues to improve decision quality by designing interventions that capitalize on components of crystallized intelligence that influence competencies relevant to decision and choice.