Affective and Deliberative Processes in Decision Making Across the Adult Life Span

许多西方社会正在迅速老龄化——例如，在美国，人口统计学家预测，由于过去一个世纪的预期寿命增加，未来20年老年人的数量将急剧增加。这一趋势引起了决策研究人员和政策分析人员的关注，因为老年人越来越多地承担着在退休计划、财务管理和医疗保健等领域做出关键、复杂决策的任务，与此同时，他们对决策至关重要的审慎心理过程正在下降。这项拟议的研究将检验老年人使用的推理策略是否能帮助他们克服与衰老相关的认知缺陷，并使他们在最重要的生活领域做出有效的选择。也就是说，拟议的研究将检验晚年向情感目标和直觉推理的动机转变是否有助于缓解对最佳决策至关重要的审慎认知过程的下降。更具体地说，研究将：(1)研究年轻人和老年人依赖情感/直觉与认知/审慎决策过程的程度，以及与年轻人和老年人采用的不同策略相关的因素；(2)探索随着年龄增长而发生的无数变化——包括认知能力下降、情感过程的保存、情感目标的动机转变和生活经验的增加——如何影响决策；(3)揭示成人一生中情感决策过程与审慎决策过程的积极和消极下游后果。通过追求这三个目标，该项目有望增加我们对成人一生中决策过程中的情感和审议过程的理解，并为如何改善老年人和年轻人的决策提供指导性建议。

Many Western societies are rapidly aging - in the United States, for example, demographers project a dramatic increase in the number of older adults in the next 20 years due to the increase in life expectancy over the past century. This trend raises concern among decision researchers and policy analysts because older adults are being charged more and more with the task of making crucial, complex decisions in such areas as retirement planning, financial management, and healthcare at the same time they are experiencing declines in deliberative psychological processes critical to decision making. The proposed research will examine whether the reasoning strategies older adults employ might help them overcome the cognitive deficits associated with aging and allow them to make effective choices in the most consequential life domains. That is, the proposed research will examine whether motivational shifts toward emotional goals and intuitive reasoning in later life could help assuage the declines in the deliberative cognitive processes critical to optimal decision making. More specifically, the research will: (1) examine the extent to which younger and older adults rely on affective/intuitive versus cognitive/deliberative decision processes and the factors associated with the different strategies employed by younger and older adults;(2) explore how the myriad changes that occur with increased age - including cognitive decline, preservation of emotional processes, motivational shifts toward emotional goals, and increased life experience - impact decision making; and (3) uncover the positive and negative downstream consequences of affective versus deliberative decision processes across the adult life span. By pursuing these three aims, this project promises to increase our understanding of affective and deliberative processes in decision making across the adult life span, and guide the way to proscriptive recommendations for how to improve decision making among both older and younger adults.