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

一生决策中的认知和情感智慧来源

• 批准号: 8413287
• 负责人: Eric J. Johnson
• 金额: $ 32万
• 依托单位: COLUMBIA UNIV NEW YORK MORNINGSIDE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-30 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8413287
• 关键词: Address; Adult; Affective; Age; Aging; Attention; Awareness; Behavioral; Cognitive; Conflict (Psychology); Consensus; Decision Aid; Decision Making; Economics; Effectiveness; Elderly; Emotional; Emotions; Exhibits; Future; General Population; Goals; Government Agencies; Healthcare; Impaired cognition; Individual; Individual Differences; Intelligence; Intelligence Tests; Intervention; Knowledge; Laboratories; Lead; Life; Liquid substance; Longevity; Measures; Outcome; Performance; Pilot Projects; Play; Process; Proxy; Regulation; Relative (related person); Reliance; Research; Resolution; Retirement; Retrieval; Role; Semantics; Short-Term Memory; Social Welfare; Societies; Source; Testing; Training; Vocabulary; Work; age difference; age related; base; design; experience; improved; insight; interpersonal conflict; novel; processing speed; psychologic; skills; theories; therapy design; therapy development; young adult

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.

描述（由申请人提供）：一个有趣的差异之间存在的性能缺陷传统上在实验室和老年人在日常生活中表现出的一般能力。与公众对这一问题的两种相互矛盾的观点相平行的是， 老年-年龄带来智慧，年龄带来技能退化-研究发现了各种证据，表明老年人的决定与年轻人相比既可能“更明智”，也可能不那么明智。趋同的证据表明，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，老年人也遭受着处理新信息所必需的认知能力的下降，包括推理，分散注意力，处理速度和工作记忆-即，也就是所谓的流动智力虽然流体智力下降对决策的影响，特别是新的决策，是很好理解的，拟议中的研究将检查结晶智力的组成部分，包括知识，经验和专业知识的一般智力的一部分，有助于老年人决策的智慧。该应用程序有两个特定目标。第一是澄清结晶智力和决策之间的关系。以前的研究表明，更好的结晶智力可以弥补老年人更差的流体智力，但我们对用于测量结晶智力的一般知识和词汇测试实际上捕获了什么能力以及这些领域一般能力如何有助于跨领域的决策质量知之甚少。例如，领域通用知识可以与领域特定知识（即，语义）知识，或者它可以代表随着年龄增长而提高的许多其他能力，包括领域特定的过程专业知识（即，从实践中获得的自动处理能力），领域通用原理（例如，知道寻求建议，消除占主导地位的替代品，并确定冗余信息），以及基于情感的决策方面（如依赖情感信息来源）。第二个目标是探索结晶智力和一种重要的、特定的决策技能、情感预测或预测什么会让我们快乐的能力之间的可能联系。情感变量在决策过程中起着重要作用，决策中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。情感预测准确性的个体差异也可能受到其他随年龄变化的能力的影响，包括流体智力和结晶智力的组成部分。我们研究了对老年人福利有影响的决策，涉及广泛的领域，包括退休和医疗保健。所获得的研究见解将为制定干预措施提供指导，这些干预措施可以帮助和改善决策--这是对老龄化社会的重要贡献，退休金的积累和支出以及保健选择）越来越取决于个人。 公共卫生相关性：通过了解结晶智力中个体和寿命差异的组成部分，导致成年人在整个生命周期中在经济和情感上做出更好的决策，这些决策涉及广泛的领域（包括退休和医疗保健），拟议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决策并改善老年人的福利。这些心理和行为经济干预措施在老龄化社会中做出了重要贡献，老龄化社会越来越多地改变了社会和个人的重要决定（例如，关于退休储蓄和累积以及关于医疗保健选择）从政府机构到个人。流体智力“训练”有效性的微弱证据（Owen et al.，2010），重要的是要找到替代途径，以提高决策质量，通过设计干预措施，利用结晶智力的组成部分，影响有关决策和选择的能力。