Emotion, Age and Domain Effects on Risky Decision Making.

Abstract

Although traditional decision theories assume that people make choices by weighing the possible gains and risks, there are many different factors which can influence people’s decision making. This dissertation examines several important influences on risky decision making including age, risk domain and affect. The research in Chapter 2 examines how young and older adults perceive and judge risks in several risk domains. Older adults are generally stereotyped to be more risk-averse than young adults. However, we found that while older adults, as compared to young adults, did perceive more risk and rated themselves as less likely to engage in risks in health/safety and ethical domains, the opposite pattern occurred for social risks: older adults perceived less risk and rated themselves as more likely to engage in the socially risky behaviors. The research in Chapter 3 focuses on the effects of emotional valence and certainty on how people think and decide about social and health risks. Participants primed with positive emotions came up with more positive outcomes than participants primed with negative emotions for both a social risk task and a health risk task. However, participants primed with positive emotions also produced more negative outcomes than participants primed with negative emotions for the health risk task. Participants primed with positive emotions also rated themselves as more likely to choose the riskier task for the health risk task and one replication of the social risk task. Chapter 4 reviews the literature on affective influences on risky decision. Although there are many distinctions made between the different types of emotions which can influence risk preferences, the type of risk involved is often ignored. In my review, I highlight some of the typical risky decision making tasks and their advantages and disadvantages as well as identify some holes in this area of research.