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Three-year decision-making collaboration results in 85 publications, and more

May 22, 2012 By

By Susan Kelly
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, May 7, 2012

Three years ago, Valerie Hans, professor of law, applied to participate in a Cornell project that would bring together social scientists working on how people make decisions. Her goal was to better understand how juries make decisions about damage awards — an area that lacked a theoretical framework. “But it succeeded beyond my wildest dreams,” Hans said.

That’s just one success story coming out Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences’ 2009-12 theme project “Judgment, Decision Making and Social Behavior.” A dozen professors spanning economics, psychology, government, law, policy analysis and management, human development, and business shared office space and met weekly to advance research on decision-making.

Hans and Valerie Reyna, professor of human development and of psychology, for example, applied Reyna’s model of general decision-making to how juries decide to award damages. “I’ve presented it to legal audiences, and there’s a lot of interest in it,” Hans said. “To have a theoretical model that’s enriched by the kinds of new knowledge about economics and psychology that we were able to learn from our colleagues in the group was really fantastic.” The pair has also co-written a scholarly article and applied to Cornell for a small grant to test the model, she added.

The project team also encouraged Hans to do something she may regret, she quipped: sign up for a 10-day neuroscience boot camp.

Research by economists and psychologists on how people make decisions is an area that has exploded with scholarly work in recent years, but Cornell is one of the few universities where top-flight economists and psychologists are talking to each other about such research, said project team leader Ted O’Donoghue, professor of economics. But the Cornell scholars, who are spread across campus, have rarely had the chance to design experiments or publish papers together.

“We said, if we put our economists and psychologists together in an environment that encourages them to engage in a more intensive way, let’s see what emerges,” O’Donoghue said at a recent project celebration.

What emerged were 85 scholarly publications, two major national conferences, regular seminars and public lectures with visiting scholars, two Cornell workshops, a slew of joint grant proposals and new research proposals, and countless casual conversations that advanced decision-making research.

In particular, the project fostered work at the intersection of law, economics and psychology, an area in which Cornell has many scholars, and catalyzed a major conference and a volume of research in that area. The project also laid the foundation for future research in cognitive neuroscience with a workshop on the tools of neuroscience, a major conference on the neuroscience of risky decision-making and a forthcoming edited volume, O’Donoghue said.

Other research included Peter Enns’ (government) finding that public opinion influences Supreme Court decisions in real, substantive ways, even when the public is unlikely to be aware of the case before the court. David Dunning (psychology) suggested that the more a person wants an object, the closer she perceives it to be. And Benjamin Ho (Johnson School) determined that that so-called “apology laws,” which make doctors’ apologies for botched medical events inadmissible in court, result in the greatest reduction in average payment size and settlement time in cases involving severe patient outcomes.

“These models of decision-making have had a significant impact within political science, and you see them in sociology and other spheres as well,” said Kenneth Roberts, ISS’ Robert S. Harrison Director and professor of government.

ISS team

ISS team members standing from left, Ori Heffetz, Valerie Hans, Peter Enns, David Dunning, Emily Owens, Ted O'Donoghue and Daniel Benjamin. Seated from left, Jeffrey Rachlinski, Benjamin Ho, Valerie Reyna, Robert Frank and Vivian Zayas.

It’s the interactions among 14 affiliated graduate students that may have the deepest impact, O’Donoghue said. “This is a group that is not tied down to standard traditions and is going to be much more willing to think outside the box.”

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New Book on teen brains can help improve reasoning, decision making

February 27, 2012 By

By Karene Booker
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, December 15, 2011 

Reyna

Reyna

Teenage brains undergo big changes, and they won’t look or function like adult brains until well into one’s 20s. In the first book on the adolescent brain and development of higher cognition, a Cornell professor helps highlight recent neuroscience discoveries about how the brain develops and their implications for real-world problems and how we teach young people and prepare them to make healthy life choices.

For the new book, “The Adolescent Brain: Learning, Reasoning, and Decision Making” (APA Books), Valerie Reyna, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology and co-director of Cornell’s Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research, brought together an interdisciplinary group of leading scientists to focus on brain development and higher cognition, which is necessary for students to learn math and science and make good decisions. Higher cognition is the set of thinking skills students use to manipulate information and ideas in ways that lead to problem solving and new insights.

“A major implication of the provocative research highlighted in this book is the contrast between adolescents’ cognitive skills, which are at a lifetime peak, and their frequent inability to use this competence in everyday decision making,” said Reyna, who co-edited the volume with Sandra Chapman, director of the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas; Michael Dougherty, professor of psychology at University of Maryland; and Jere Confrey, professor of mathematics education at North Carolina State University.

“But the evidence suggests that the way young people learn, reason and decide changes [during this period] and can be changed,” said Reyna. “We must move education beyond rote learning to fostering the cognitive skills essential for academic achievement and economic well-being in our knowledge-based economy. Higher cognition is a foundation critical for individuals and our country to be competitive. This volume introduces a new framework for interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists in neuroscience, psychology and education.”

“The Adolescent Brain” addresses the major changes in memory, learning and decision making experienced by adolescents as they mature, beginning with a review of the changes in brain anatomy and physiology based on extensive neuroimaging studies. The ensuing chapters examine the developing capacity of the adolescent brain, covering such topics as the underpinnings of intelligence and problem solving, strategies for training teen reasoning abilities, effectively teaching mathematical concepts, the effects of emotion on reasoning, and factors that promote teen engagement in health-related behaviors.

The book wraps up with a chapter by Reyna and Ph.D. student Christina Chick that integrates the behavioral and neuroscience evidence in a process model of adolescent risky decision making. Chick and Reyna explain, for example, how massive pruning of gray matter in late adolescence fits with the growth of adolescents’ ability to connect the dots and understand the underlying meaning of situations. This gist thinking facilitates recognition of danger and protects against unhealthy risk-taking, they say.

The book is intended for researchers, students and professionals in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and psychology and for education policymakers and educators, especially in mathematics.

Reyna will present a talk on the “Adolescent Brain” March 1 at 4-5:30 p.m., 160 Mann Library.

Karene Booker is extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

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Videos Now Online from Bronfenbrenner Neuroscience of Risk Conference

February 27, 2012 By

 

Videos are now online from the 2011 Bronfenbrenner Conference, “The Neuroscience of Risky Decision Making.”

At the conference, neuroscientists, neuroeconomists and social scientists explored scientific theories about the brain mechanisms underlying risky decision-making, paving the way for translation of basic science into policy and practice.

The conference, co-organized by Valerie Reyna, professor of human development and co-director for Cornell’s new Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility, and Vivian Zayas, assistant professor of psychology, drew scholars from as far away as Europe to share research on such topics as brain maturation, neural responses to rewards and punishments at different ages, emotional regulation and self-control. Many of those who participated are founders in their field.

Presenters:

Antoine Bechara, University of Southern California
Eveline Crone, Leiden University
Paul Glimcher, New York University
Jay Giedd, National Institute of Mental Health
Scott Huettel, Duke University
Brian Knutson, Stanford University
Beatriz Luna, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Kevin Ochsner, Columbia University
Philip Zelazo, University of Minnesota

Links:

Presentations, discussions, Q & A, and panel conversations

Article: Experts explore links between risk-taking, brain mechanisms

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Short history of the decision making research cites Reyna’s work

February 27, 2012 By

 

Valerie Reyna

Reyna

The pervasive importance of decision making in our lives has made it a critical subject for research. This quick review of the historyof decision science and the scholars who made the field includes our own Valerie Reyna, professor of human development and of psychology and co-director of Cornell’s Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research. Read the full story

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Study: Older adults more willing to wait for financial gain

July 25, 2011 By

Loeckenhoff

    
By Karene Booker

Older adults, compared with younger adults, tend to report they are more upbeat and that their emotions and mental health do not interfere with their work and social life. That better mental health allows them to wait longer for a monetary gain, reports a new Cornell study.

For example, even though younger people have their entire future ahead of them, they’re more impatient than older adults when it comes to waiting for financial rewards, the study found.

The researchers, publishing in Psychology and Aging (26:2), sought to resolve how and why age influences people’s tendency to devalue or discount future rewards and losses compared to immediate ones.

Although the researchers found no age differences in people’s choices about losing money, they found that older adults are more likely than their younger counterparts to wait for a larger amount of money rather than take an immediate, smaller sum.

“Our findings suggest that the improved emotional functioning generally experienced by the older adults is the primary driver of their greater ability to forgo immediate temptation in favor of waiting for a later, greater amount of money,” said lead author Corinna Loeckenhoff, assistant professor of human development in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, who conducted the study with Ted O’Donoghue, professor of economics, and David Dunning, professor of psychology.

“We also found that younger adults expected that emotional reactions to gains and losses would feel less intense if they happened in the future. Older adults were more likely to understand that gains and losses would probably feel the same no matter when they occurred.”

Unlike other studies, the research examined the effect of age on people’s choices about financial gains and losses using computerized testing with real money outcomes, rather than taking a survey approach; and it studied age differences in both gains and losses.

Study participants — 98 people between the ages of 19 and 91 — were asked to make a series of choices about receiving or losing money, all involving an immediate gain (or loss) versus a future gain (or loss). For example, they were asked to choose between getting $5 now or $7.50 in 90 days. The gains or losses in the future ranged from $4.75 to $7.50 with time delays ranging from seven to 180 days. Participants also completed questionnaires that assessed cognitive abilities, personality traits and aspects of mental health. At the end of the study session, one of each participant’s choices was picked at random and the appropriate amount of money was given to the participant. Participants were given a starting balance of $8, so they would not lose their own money.

“Understanding this [phenomenon] better would have implications for a host of important choices, such as saving for retirement and choosing medical care,” said Loeckenhoff, who was designated as a “rising star” by the Association for Psychological Science this past May.

If confirmed by future research, she said, the findings could lead to the developing age-appropriate decision aids. Younger adults, in particular, would benefit from interventions that help them better manage their emotions and recognize the emotional reality of future consequences.

This research was supported in part by Cornell’s Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research and the Lois and Mel Tukman Endowed Assistant Professorship awarded to Loeckenhoff, who also received funding from the President’s Council of Cornell Women and the Cornell ISS Small Grants Program to support her work on decision making in older adults.

Karene Booker is extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

Related Links:
College of Human Ecology
Department of Human Development
Corinna Loeckenhoff
Ted O’Donoghue
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Decision-making expert blames ‘good stories’ for anti-vaccination movement

July 25, 2011 By

       
By Karene Booker

Reyna

Despite the success of vaccines in preventing a long list of diseases, why is opposition to vaccination gaining hold? Decision-making expert Valerie Reyna contends that it’s because anti-vaccination messages tell a compelling story compared with official sources, and they meet people’s need to understand rare adverse outcomes.

A Google search of “vaccine,” for example, produces links to government and science-based vaccine websites on the same screen as official-sounding anti-vaccination links.

Given the success of vaccines in preventing a long list of diseases, why is opposition to vaccination gaining hold? Decision-making expert Valerie Reyna contends that it’s because anti-vaccination messages tell a compelling story compared to official sources, and they meet people’s need to understand rare adverse outcomes.

“In the era of Web 2.0, the contagion of ideas, transmitted rapidly through social media, is as concerning as the contagion of diseases because of their power to reduce vaccination rates, leaving populations vulnerable to preventable death and disability,” said Reyna, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology and a co-director of the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research.

This spring, the Centers for Disease Control reported that the United States is experiencing the highest number of measles cases in more than a decade. According to the alert, measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000 due to a high vaccination rate. This could change should vaccination rates decline.

Reyna presented her model of vaccine decisions at the University of Erfurt, Germany, in May to an international meeting of scientists examining the implications of the Internet and social media such as Twitter on public health messages about vaccination.

Being informed about vaccines involves more than having the facts. According Reyna’s research, people primarily rely on the meaning or “gist” of a situation rather than details to make judgments and decisions.

“Gist is simple, but not simple-minded,” Reyna said. “It involves connecting the dots — building on background knowledge, life experience and values. When people lack background knowledge, they tend to rely on anecdotes, personal experience and the little information that is widely available.”

Since most people don’t understand how vaccines work, the Internet, which facilitates users across the globe to sharing personal experiences and ideas about health care, fills the vacuum.

According to Reyna, anti-vaccination messages are expected when people don’t understand how vaccination works and when adverse events that are difficult to explain appear to be connected. Autism, for example, is diagnosed in children during the same time period that children receive a battery of vaccinations. Despite research to the contrary, anti-vaccination messages have claimed vaccines are to blame. Official sites, on the other hand, tend not to provide a convincing narrative story line that helps people connect the dots.

Under these circumstances, how do people approach the decision to vaccinate? In Reyna’s model, the decision to get a flu shot, for example, could be a seen as a decision between feeling OK (by not getting the vaccine) or taking a chance on not feeling OK (due to a vaccine side effect). Without better information, many people would choose not to get a vaccine.

“Public health messages need to be designed so that the correct ‘gist’ pops out,” Reyna said, “because the drive to extract meaning, combined with widespread lack of background knowledge about how vaccination works, is fertile ground for misleading explanations to take root.”

The conference was supported by grants from the German Science Foundation, the European Center of Disease Prevention and Control, the University of Erfurt and other sources.

Karene Booker is extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development.

Related Links:
College of Human Ecology
Department of Human Development
Valerie Reyna
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Decisions, decisions: Theme project scholars collaborate on judgment, decision making, social behavior

November 16, 2010 By

ISS Judgment TeamHow do jurors arrive at a dollar amount they award to plaintiffs? This is among the questions Valerie Reyna, professor of human development, is investigating with colleagues in the Institute for the Social Sciences’ 2009-12 theme project “Judgment, Decision Making, and Social Behavior” (JDSB).

“If it weren’t for this particular project, where we were brought together to reach across disciplinary lines, I would not be working on this,” Reyna said. “There’s already been a successful payoff in terms of my research.”

The project unites 12 Cornell faculty members, from such disparate disciplines as economics, psychology, government and law, to examine questions of common interest and find new approaches to problems. Read full article

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Collaboration on Judgment, Decision Making and Social Behavior

November 12, 2009 By

Valerie Reyna along with faculty from economics, psychology, government, management, policy analysis and management, and law will collaborate on a new project sponsored by the Institute for the Social Sciences on Judgment, Decision making and Social Behavior. The project will be led by Ted O’Donoghue in the Department of Economics.

The field of Behavioral Decision Research, populated primarily by psychologists, attempts to develop descriptively accurate models of human judgment (i.e., how people understand and react to uncertain outcomes) and human decision making. The field of Behavioral Economics, populated primarily by economists, attempts to incorporate ideas from Behavioral Decision Research in order to make better predictions about economic behavior and economic outcomes. In recent years, each field has expanded rapidly within its discipline. However, despite their closely related research agendas, there is surprisingly little direct interaction between the two fields, and even less collaboration. This lack of collaboration is a major stumbling block for the behavioral literature — many important questions are addressed independently despite the potential benefits from working together. Furthermore, both fields suffer from a lack of interaction with other social sciences which study many of the same questions.

Cornell is uniquely positioned to solve these problems and thereby move to the forefront of research on judgment, decision making, and social behavior. We have an established strength in both Behavioral Decision Research and Behavioral Economics. Moreover, Cornell is unique in that its psychologists and economists actively engage each other and consequently have developed an understanding and appreciation of each other’s field. While the potential for fruitful collaboration exists, the physically dispersed nature of behavioral scholars at Cornell has served as a barrier. This project will bring these scholars together to catalyze truly interdisciplinary collaboration that should persist well beyond the duration of the project. In addition, this project will identify ways to broaden the behavioral community to other social sciences.

For Further Information

Judgment, Decision Making and Social Behavior

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Seniors: Follow your gut

April 28, 2009 By

by Susan Lang and Andrew Reed

Many older adults experience decline in mental processes. But this need not be a handicap, because they largely can compensate by relying more on their strong emotional functioning, which doesn’t decline with age.

According to Cornell psychologist Joseph Mikels, “One way older adults may be able to compensate for declines in memory and other important decision-making processes is through preserved emotional skills.”

Mikels has been studying the role of emotion-cognition interactions in complex decision making, and how the quality of decisions can be improved across the adult life span. He has found that older adults:

do not experience age-related declines in emotional processing.
should trust their “gut feelings” when making decisions.
prefer not to have too much choice.
Mikels, an assistant professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, says that research suggests that older adults may differ substantially from younger adults in how they make decisions. As director of the Emotion and Cognition Laboratory, he conducts studies to examine how emotion interfaces with such cognitive processes as working memory and selective attention.

Mikels and others have found, in fact, that relying on emotion, rather than intensive deliberation, can play an important role in decision making. To determine whether older adults might benefit from a reliance on abilities that are spared from age-related declines — namely emotional processing — Mikels’ research team presented older and younger adults with hypothetical health-related decisions (choosing a physician, for example), in which one of the alternatives was objectively superior to the others.

“When older adults relied on memory-based decision strategies, the quality of their decisions was quite a bit lower than their younger counterparts,” Mikels said. “In stark contrast, when older adults relied on their gut feelings, the quality of their decisions was just as high as that of the younger adults.”

By focusing older adults’ attention on their “gut feelings,” Mikels was able to significantly enhance the quality of their decisions. Indeed, studies suggest that older adults may not only prefer to “go with their gut,” but that their decisions may benefit immensely from doing so, Mikels said.

Mikels has also found that older adults prefer having less choice in decision making. In a series of large-scale surveys conducted with Cornell colleague Kosali Simon in Ithaca and New York City, hundreds of younger and older adults reported how many options they wished to choose from in a variety of domains, from prescription drug plans to ice cream flavors. Critically, older adults wanted, on average, half as many options as younger adults, and the older the participant, the fewer choices they desired.

In a separate study, Mikels and Simon measured self-reports of how much money older versus younger adults would be willing to pay for varying degrees of choice among prescription drug plans. Whereas younger adults were willing to pay increasingly more for additional options, older adults were not. In other words, Mikels’ research suggests that excessive choice may be especially undesirable as we age, as it not only undermines the quality of decisions, but also people’s motivation to choose anything at all. Individuals who are faced with dozens of options are less satisfied with their decisions than people who choose from relatively few options, even when the decisions appear as simple as selecting a variety of jam. And, evidence is now suggesting that this “choice overload” effect may be especially pronounced for older adults.

As such, Mikels said it would seem especially prudent to buffer older adults from these ill effects by tailoring decision environments more closely to their abilities and preferences.

Susan Lang is an editor at the Cornell Chronicle. Andrew Reed is a human development graduate student.


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Hearts, Minds, and Choices – Helping Improve Decision making Across the Life Span

February 4, 2009 By

Andrew Reed


Print version

Consider the following scenario: The government offers you the opportunity to enroll in a heavily subsidized prescription drug coverage plan, through which you can purchase a wide range of medications at drastically reduced prices, all from the comfort of your home computer. But there’s a catch: there are over 50 plans to choose from, each of which can be assessed along a dozen attributes, from monthly premiums and deductibles to customer service ratings and pharmacy coverage. And, as if this decision weren’t daunting enough, now imagine that you are a senior citizen with little to no computer experience.

If this scenario seems troubling to you, you are not alone. In fact, over 40 million Americans aged 65 and older are offered this very decision on a yearly basis, and, of those, several million (over 4 million in 2008) fail to make any choice whatsoever (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2008). Research evidence suggests that older adults, who are the fastest growing cohort in the US, may differ substantially from younger adults in how they make decisions. For example, although older adults may experience declines in basic-level cognitive abilities, which is why research is so essential, older adults’ decision making may be best conceptualized as a combination of particular vulnerabilities and, in some cases, particular strengths (see below and Strough, Mehta, McFall, & Schuller, 2008). Despite these research findings, seniors are being offered increasingly more decisions and choices. What can be done to help older adults make these complex decisions? Interdisciplinary research conducted by psychologist Dr. Joseph Mikels, in collaboration with economist Dr. Kosali Simon, offers several prescriptions for improving older adults’ decision-making.

Aging of the Mind and Heart

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about older adults? If you answered something along the lines of “cognitive decline,” you may not be too far from the truth. There is extensive research evidence of age-related deficits in a variety of mental processes, from working memory and information processing to reasoning and numerical abilities—all of which have been implicated as crucial to effective decision making (for a review, see Peters et al., 2007). Based on such findings, one would expect older adults to be inferior to their younger counterparts in decision making skills, and there is some evidence to support this notion.

However, in contrast to the bleak portrait of cognitive decline, most research depicts age-related changes in emotion in a more positive light. Older adults, relative to younger adults, demonstrate preserved, if not improved emotional functioning and regulation, and also report more frequent positive emotions and fewer negative emotions (for a review see Carstensen, Mikels, & Mather, 2006). In addition, while younger adults tend to focus more on negative information in the environment, older adults are more likely to focus on, and remember, positive information (Carstensen & Mikels, 2005). As such, while older adults’ cognitive abilities appear to deteriorate over time, their emotional skills are largely spared from age-related declines (e.g. Mikels et al., 2005).

Going with Your Gut

Do the best decisions come from the mind, or from the gut? It has been assumed by many western philosophers that the surest path to a sound decision is to gather and evaluate all available information about one’s options through careful, rational thinking. But recently, psychologists have suggested that conscious thinking about options may actually impair accuracy and satisfaction for certain decisions relative to “snap judgments” or decisions based on “unconscious” deliberation (Dijksterhuis et al., 2006). In addition, other “decision scientists” have called attention to the utility of emotion in the decision-making process (e.g. Slovic et al., 2002).

Research by Dr. Mikels addressed the age old debate between the supremacy of “rational” deliberation versus emotional intuitions from a life-span perspective. In light of the aforementioned diverging trajectories in the aging mind and heart, Dr. Mikels questioned whether older adults’ decision making might benefit from a reliance on the skills which are spared from age-related declines—namely emotional processing. In a series of laboratory-based studies, Dr. Mikels’ research team presented hypothetical healthcare-related decisions (choosing a physician, for example) to older and younger adults in which one of the alternatives was objectively superior to the others. When older adults used memory-based, detail-focused strategies to decide, their accuracy was, as expected, worse than that of younger adults. However, when older adults eschewed this “rational” approach to choosing in favor of one based on emotional reactions to the information, they were just as accurate as younger adults.

Thus, by focusing older adults’ attention to their “gut feelings,” Dr. Mikels was able to significantly enhance the quality of their decisions. In a separate study, older adults reported that their capacity to engage in effortful deliberation when making decisions, and their interest in doing so, were reduced relative to younger adults. The combined results of these studies suggest that older adults may not only prefer to “go with their gut,” but that their decisions may benefit immensely from doing so.

Follow-up studies of younger adults demonstrated that they may also benefit from relying on intuitive, emotion-based decision strategies for complex decisions. In particular, college students were more likely to choose the “best” option for complex decisions among vacations or apartments when focusing on their feelings, relative to students who relied on their memory for details about the alternatives. However, emotion-based decision strategies were no more accurate for domains in which students are relatively inexperienced, such as selecting hospitals or doctors. Thus, the benefits of emotion-based decisions may extend to adults of all ages, depending on the choice domain.

How Much Choice is Enough?

When it comes to choice in decision making, the contemporary mentality seems typified by a more-is-better mantra. But is this the case for all individuals? Research by Dr. Mikels and Dr. Simon suggests that while such a mentality may be part of the exuberance of youth, older adults neither desire, nor value, choice to the same extent that younger adults do (Reed, Mikels, & Simon, 2008). In a series of large-scale surveys conducted in Ithaca and New York City, hundreds of older adults (over 65) and undergraduate students reported how many options they wished to choose from in a variety of domains, from prescription drug plans to ice cream flavors. As expected, older adults desired on average less than half as many options as younger adults did, and this preference for choice continued to decline even among the oldest participants. That is, not only did the average 70 year old desire fewer options than a 20-year old, but 80-year olds desired even fewer options than 70-year olds. Additionally, older adults preferred only one-tenth as many options for Medicare Part D prescription drug plans as they are currently offered, on average, across the country (i.e. 5 versus 50).

Clearly then, older adults do not desire as much choice as they are offered, nor as much choice as younger adults do when making decisions. But how would they react to the possibility of having greater choice? In a separate study, Dr. Mikels’ research team measured self-reports of how much money older versus younger adults would be willing to pay for varying degrees of choice among prescription drug plans (i.e. 55, 25, 10, 5, or no options). Whereas younger adults were willing to pay increasingly more for additional options (roughly 50 dollars for every doubling of the choice set), older adults were largely unwilling to pay extra for more choice (Mikels, Reed, & Simon, under review).

But what is so bad about giving older adults too many options? In direct contrast to the more-is-better mentality, research suggests that excessive choice may be especially detrimental to decision making, as it not only undermines the quality of decisions, but also people’s motivation to choose anything at all (for a review see Botti & Iyengar, 2006). Individuals who are faced with dozens of options are less satisfied with their decisions than people who choose from relatively few options, even when the decisions appear as simple as selecting a variety of jam. And, given age-related declines in decision-making competence, this “choice overload” effect may be especially pronounced for older adults. As such, it would seem especially prudent to buffer older adults from these ill effects by tailoring decision environments more closely to their abilities and preferences.

What is the Best Way to Convey Information?

Having too much choice is only one of many factors contributing to the excessively complex decisions facing older adults. Another culprit in the onslaught of complex decisions may be the way in which these choices are presented. For example, when seniors select a Medicare Part D plan, they are not only choosing among dozens of options, but the plans are, by default, displayed on the website in only one manner—by cost to the average consumer. As a result of this one-size-fits-all approach, seniors may not be able to find the plan that best suits their particular health profiles. But how might we improve the system for presenting information about such crucial decisions? To combat the difficulties associated with choosing a Medicare Part D insurance plan, Dr. Simon developed innovative and consumer-friendly methods of presenting older adults with prescription drug plan information. Through the Cornell University Resource Education for Medicare Part D (CURxED) program, her team disseminated easy-to-read comparative information on each drug coverage plan to county extension offices, offices of aging, public libraries and the like. So as to facilitate the communication of plan differences to seniors, information sheets were compiled into three separate binders organized by insurance plan, illness (or combination of illnesses), and prescription drugs, respectively. By presenting various paper-based alternatives to the problematic electronic plan-based presentation of the Medicare Part D website, Dr. Simon’s team was able to convey to older adults the most cost-effective plans based on their individual backgrounds, and to encourage seniors to consider whether they should sign up for the benefit.

Implications

How can you apply these research findings to your daily life? If you are helping an older adult make a decision, you may want to consider the following suggestions:

Encourage going-with-your-gut when appropriate. For example, when helping older adults make complex decisions, it may be best to encourage them to focus on their feelings as opposed to the specific details. They may not only make better decisions, but also feel more satisfied with their choices. Similarly, when younger adults are making complex decisions for familiar domains, it may not hurt for them to “go with their gut” either.

Present age- and person-appropriate numbers of options. Older adults neither desire too many options, nor do they fare well when faced with complex decisions, so make sure that the choices you offer them are both reasonable and desired. For example, instead of listing all of the available home health care agencies in the area, first present the 5 or so most popular ones. If the person you are assisting isn’t satisfied with any of them, present an additional few options. By restricting the flow of information in this manner, you will increase the odds of making a high-quality, satisfying decision.

Give them the amount of information they want, not how much you think they want. Older adults’ decision-making strategies and preferences are significantly different from those of younger cohorts. As such, it is crucial to keep in mind that what seems reasonable and desirable to you may be overwhelming to older adults. The safest way of ensuring a good fit between the decisions presented to older adults and their individual characteristics is to simply ask them what they feel they can handle and/or prefer in terms of decision complexity.

Help seniors find the right information. There is a wealth of knowledge out there for seniors about critical healthcare decisions, including the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. Unfortunately, most of it is on the Internet, which is an unfamiliar medium for the average older adult. Helping seniors effectively surf the web, especially on senior-specific sites such as the AARP website, may substantially increase their ability to make more informed and accurate healthcare decisions.

Don’t underestimate older adults’ abilities. Although there are certain types of decisions for which older adults do not perform as well as younger adults, most studies find little to no difference in the quality of decisions made by adults across age groups. It is now believed that older adults are able to effectively compensate for their diminished memory and processing resources through the use of accumulated knowledge and emotional skills. As such, discounting seniors’ abilities to make effective decisions for themselves based on common stereotypes of aging is not recommended.

Just because seniors prefer simple decisions doesn’t mean they cannot process complex ones. Research has shown that older adults are more selective than younger adults in their use of mental processing and deliberation. That is, they do not engage in effortful deliberation over judgments and decisions indiscriminately, but rather conserve them for major social and emotional decisions. The next time you notice an older person appear to skim over a decision instead of diving into the details, keep in mind that he or she may be doing so voluntarily, and not because of any mental impairment.

Further Resources

Emotion & Cognition Laboratory

Cornell University Resource Education for Medicare Part D

AARP (formerly American Association for Retired Persons)

References

Botti, S. & Iyengar, S.S. (2006). The Dark Side of Choice: When Choice Impairs Social Welfare. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 25(1), 24-38.

Carstensen, L. L. & Mikels, J. A. (2005). At the intersection of emotion and cognition: Aging and the positivity effect. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 117-121.

Carstensen, L. L., Mikels, J. A., & Mather, M. (2006). Aging and the intersection of cognition, motivation and emotion. In J. Birren & K. W. Schaie (Eds.), Handbook of the Psychology of Aging (Sixth ed., pp. 343-362). San Diego: Academic Press.

Dijksterhuis, A., Bos, M.W., Nordgren, L.F., & van Baaren, R.B. (2006). On making the right choice: The deliberation-without-attention effect. Science, 311, 1005-1007.

Mikels, J. A., Larkin, G. R., Reuter-Lorenz, P. A., & Carstensen, L. L. (2005). Divergent trajectories in the aging mind: Changes in working memory for affective versus visual information with age. Psychology and Aging, 20(4), 542-553.

Mikels, J.A., Reed, A.E., & Simon, K.I. (2008). Older Adults Place Lower Value on Choice Relative to Young Adults. Manuscript under review.

Peters, E., Hess, T.M., Västfjäll, D., & Auman, C. (2007). Adult age differences in dual information processes: Implications for the role of affective and deliberative processes in older adults’ decision making. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(1), 1-23.

Reed, A.E., Mikels, J.A., & Simon, K.I. (2008). Older adults prefer less choice than young adults. Psychology and Aging, 23(3), 671-675.

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