The Affect Gap in Risky Choice Is Similar for Younger and Older Adults

While risky decision making is often studied using decisions with relatively affect-poor outcomes (typically moderate amounts of money), many decisions in the real world elicit higher levels of affect (e.g., medical decisions). Research suggests that choices diverge between relatively affect-rich decisions and relatively affect-poor monetary decisions. However, it is unknown to what extent this "affect gap" holds in older adults, who make some of the most consequential medical and financial decisions among the population and have been shown to process affect differently than younger adults. In the present study, we compared decision quality and risk attitude in affect-rich choice problems (with medical side effects as possible outcomes) to that in structurally identical and economically matched affect-poor choice problems (with monetary losses as possible outcomes) in 100 older (aged 65-80 years, M = 69.7) and 100 younger (aged 18-29 years, M = 23.5) adults. Replicating previous findings on the affect gap, individuals were more risk averse (odds ratio [OR] = 1.52) and made worse quality decisions (OR = 2.13) for affect-rich than for affect-poor problems. Importantly, this pattern emerged very similarly for younger and older adults. Computational modeling with cumulative prospect theory indicated that participants tended to weight probability information less strongly for affect-rich than for affect-poor choices, regardless of age. Yet, while younger adults were more sensitive to differences in affect-rich than in affect-poor outcomes, older adults showed similar sensitivity to differences in affect-rich and affect-poor outcomes. These findings demonstrate the robustness of the affect gap across age groups and have implications for risk communication.