Dissociating Affect and Deliberation in Choice Processes

Decision Science Research Institute, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

Although many of the most important issues of our time (e.g., cleaning up a nuclear waste site or choosing a medical procedure) involve thoughts and feelings about decision options, relatively little is known about how affect (feelings or emotional evaluations) and deliberation interact in such human judgment and decision processes, particularly among older adults. In the proposed research, we use a new perspective to examine how thoughts and feelings interact in decision making. Human decision making is a complex phenomenon involving multiple components that may change with age. By examining how older and younger adults make decisions in different ways, we can build better theories of how our judgment and decision making might change as we age. We suggest that the judgments and decisions of older adults (compared to younger adults) may be influenced less by deliberation and more by affect. As a result, older adults may produce different decisions than younger adults (sometimes better, sometimes worse). Funding from this grant will allow us to pursue experiments that build on recent findings about the role of affect and deliberation in the judgment and decision-making processes of older and younger adults. This research will add to the growing body of knowledge concerning how affective and deliberative ways of thinking may interact and follow particular developmental paths. Studying the judgment and decision processes of older adults has strong practical implications since the quality of the decisions that older adults make impacts the quality of life that they experience. Improving our understanding of older adult decision making will undoubtedly provide great practical benefits by pointing the way toward aiding and improving decisions. In addition to these practical benefits, coordinating decision-making research with studies of age-related changes in memory, affect, and other psychological processes may produce important scientific insights into the mechanisms that underlie the judgments and decisions of older and younger adults.