Emotion experience and decision behavior in normal aging

Stanford University, Stanford CA

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by candidate): Specifying how emotional factors influence motivation, choice, and decisions across the lifespan is a critical goal for understanding the aging mind. While emotion has traditionally been considered disruptive to rational choice, recent studies demonstrating the tight interplay of emotion and reason in both economic and social decisions suggest a more differentiated picture. Emotions provide information to the decision-maker regarding the relevance of choice options, the attractiveness of strategies, and the desirability of outcomes. Age-related changes may complicate this picture. Despite predictable cognitive declines, emotional functions are remarkably preserved in normal aging. Moreover, changes in emotional and social goals at the end of life may interact with decision behaviors in as yet unknown ways. A major question addressed by this research is whether there are age-related differences in emotional influences on decision-making and whether biological or motivational changes lie at their core. Four studies are proposed to examine the experiential, behavioral, physiological, and neural correlates of emotion elicited by decisions involving monetary incentives pursued in social contexts. Experiments 1 and 2 examine the influence of aging and time perspective on emotion experience, motivated behavior, and peripheral physiology in a monetary incentive task within a social exchange context. Experiment 3 examines age-related differences in the activity of neural systems involved in emotion experiences related to the anticipation and receipt of rewards and losses. Experiment 4 focuses on the influence of time perspective manipulations on activity in these neural systems.