The Role of Emotion and Cognition in Health-Related Decisions Across Adulthood

描述（由申请人提供）：美国的老年人经常面临复杂而有压力的健康相关决定，这些决定可能对他们的健康和寿命产生深远的影响。其中一些决定涉及生死问题。更多情况下，决定反映了对健康产生累积和持久影响的日常选择。拟议项目的总体目标是阐明老年人作出与健康有关的决定的方式，更重要的是，阐明提高他们所作选择质量的方法。在决策过程中利用保留下来的情绪过程可能在一定程度上抵消与年龄相关的认知过程中的弱点。本研究的具体目的是：(1)更好地理解情绪、认知和动机对日常生活中与健康相关的决策的影响，(2)检验先前记录的决策的年龄差异是否延伸到相对不健康的成年人中与健康相关的决策。研究1将采用每日日记设计来检查与情绪相关的目标如何影响日常生活中与健康相关的决策。研究2将采用实验设计来检查相对不健康的老年人的决定。最终，提出的研究可以帮助老年人做出更明智的决定，获得理想的结果，指导对高级指令的思考，并对促进日常生活中健康的行为选择具有启示意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Older adults in the U.S. often are faced with complex and stressful health-related decisions that can have profound consequences on their health and longevity. Some of these decisions concern life and death issues. More often decisions reflect everyday choices that come to have cumulative and enduring effects on health. The overall objective of the proposed project is to illuminate the ways that older people make health- related decisions and, more importantly, shed light on ways to improve the quality of the choices they make. It is possible that drawing upon preserved emotional processes during decision-making could somewhat offset age-related weaknesses in cognitive processing. The specific aims of the proposed studies are to (1) to better understand the impact of emotion, cognition, and motivation on health-related decisions in the context of everyday life, (2) to test whether previously documented age differences in decision-making extend to health- related decisions in relatively unhealthy adults. Study 1 will employ a daily diary design to examine how emotion-related goals impact health-related decisions in the context of daily life. Study 2 will employ an experimental design to examine the decisions of relatively unhealthy older adults. Ultimately, the proposed research may help older adults make more informed decisions with desirable outcomes, guide thinking about advanced directives, and have implications for promoting healthy behavioral choices in day-to-day life.