Age Differences in Decision Making: To Take a Risk or Not?

A controlled laboratory experiment was used to assess the efficacy of the cognitive processes that underlie risk taking decision making in young and elderly people. Thirty-six participants took part in the study; half the subjects were elderly (mean age of 74) and the other half were young adults (mean age of 19). The elderly participants made equivalent decisions to those of the control young adults. Both age-groups of participants systematically and comparably changed their behavior as a function of risk levels. Furthermore, the elderly participants, relative to young adults, did not exhibit any slowing down in the speed of processing the information involved in making risk taking decisions, reflecting that healthy elderly people are cognitively apt to making risk taking decisions. Both age-groups took comparably less time on the easy trials (trials with either low or high levels of risk) and comparably more time on the difficult trials (trials with medium levels of risk).