Do older people take fewer risks?

Self-report and behavior do not always converge

The results of the first study, published in the journal Psychology and Aging, show that based on self-reports, risk-taking propensity decreases over the subject's life span, but can be observed both to decrease and stay the same, or even increase slightly, in a variety of risk-taking tasks. The study found that different measurement instruments sometimes result in different risk profiles.

As a potential cause for these heterogeneous results, the researchers cite the different cognitive requirements of the tasks. Demanding tasks presented a greater challenge to older people than younger people. One example of a more complex task used in both studies was the "Balloon Analogue Risk Task," which involved inflating virtual balloons, with points awarded for each pump stroke. The larger the balloon, the more points are awarded and the higher the subject's winnings at the end of the task. If the balloon is inflated too far, it bursts and all the points earned are lost. The balloons burst at various points, which are, of course, unknown to the subjects. Successful completion of the balloon task requires the extraction and integration of various pieces of information.

Older people may find it harder to cope with these demands, causing them to resort, for example, to less profitable, risk-averse behavior in the balloon task. Depending on the task structure and requirements, the risk propensity observed in older subjects may remain the same, decrease or even increase.

Neurological foundations of decision making

In order to better understand the biological foundations of these processes, in a second study the researchers compared the neural functional profiles observed in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task for groups of 26 younger and 27 older subjects. In collaboration with Chinese scientists, they identified age-related functional changes in a certain region of the brain as a potential contributing factor to the observed heterogeneity in risk tasks. As the researchers report in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, age does not seem to substantially influence the processing of risk, reward or loss per se, but rather to affect the way they are integrated into a decision signal.

In summary, to ask whether older people take fewer risks than younger people or not is perhaps misguided. Instead, what transpires from these two studies is that risk-taking propensity and changes therein depend on the complexity of the task. The processing and integration of large quantities of information is of vital importance, in particular in terms of financial and health-related decisions. The authors therefore recommend age-appropriate structuring and communication of information in order to ensure that the preferences of older people do not result merely as an effect of the measurement.