Risk Taking for Potential Reward Decreases across the Lifespan.

ABSTRACT: The extent to which aging affects decision-making is controversial. Given the critical financial decisions that older adults face (e.g., managing retirement funds), changes in risk preferences are of particular importance [1]. Although some studies have found that older individuals are more risk averse than younger ones [2-4], there are also conflicting results, and a recent meta-analysis found no evidence for a consistent change in risk taking across the lifespan [5]. There has as yet been little examination of one potential substrate for age-related changes in decision-making, namely age-related decline in dopamine, a neuromodulator associated with risk-taking behavior. Here, we characterized choice preferences in a smartphone-based experiment (n = 25,189) in which participants chose bet

SUBMITTER: Rutledge RB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4920952 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature