Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T17:26:18.502Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Prosocial behavior in aging: which factors can explain age-related differences in social-economic decision making?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2019

Alessia Rosi Open the ORCID record for Alessia Rosi [Opens in a new window] ,
Marta Nola ,
Serena Lecce  and
Elena Cavallini
Alessia Rosi*
Affiliation:
Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Marta Nola
Affiliation:
Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Serena Lecce
Affiliation:
Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Elena Cavallini
Affiliation:
Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
*
Correspondence should be addressed to: Alessia Rosi, Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, P.zza Botta 6, Pavia 27100, Italy. Phone: +39 0382 986133; Fax: +39 0382 986132. Email: alessia.rosi@ateneopv.it.
Get access

Abstract

Objectives:

Older adults tend to exhibit more prosocial behavior than younger adults. However, little research has focused on understanding the factors that may explain such differences in the social decision-making process. The first aim was to examine if, and to what degree, the content of social information about a recipient has an impact on young vs. older adults’ prosocial behavior. The second aim was to understand if empathic concern, Theory of Mind, and reasoning explain the (expected) age differences in prosociality.

Design:

Cross-sectional study.

Setting:

The study was conducted in northern Italy in a laboratory setting.

Participants:

Forty-eight younger adults (Mage = 23.29; SD = 2.20) and 48 older adults (Mage = 70.19; SD = 5.13).

Measurements:

Prosocial behavior was measured using the Dictator Game in which participants split a sum of money with recipients presented with four levels of description: no information, physical description, positive psychological description, and negative psychological description. In addition, participants performed tasks on emphatic concern, Theory of Mind, and reasoning.

Results:

Results showed that older adults are more prosocial than younger adults in the Dictator Game. This finding was evident when the recipient was described with positive psychological and physical features. This pattern of results was statistically explained by the reduction in reasoning ability.

Conclusion:

These findings suggest a relationship between age-related reduction in reasoning ability and older adults’ prosocial behavior. The theoretical and practical implication of the empirical findings are discussed.

Keywords

agingsocial-economic decision makingDictator Gamecognitionreasoningtheory of mindempathyindividual differences
Type
Original Research Article
Information
International Psychogeriatrics , Volume 31 , Issue 12: Issue Theme: Assessment of Cognitive Impairment in East Asia , December 2019 , pp. 1747 - 1757
Copyright
© International Psychogeriatric Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bailey, P. E., Ruffman, T. and Rendell, P. G. (2013). Age-related differences in social economic decision making: the ultimatum game. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 68, 356–363.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baron, R. M. and Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173–1182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y. and Plumb, I. (2001). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 42, 241–251.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Batson, C. D. (2010). Empathy-induced altruistic motivation. In Mikulincer, M. and Shaver, P. R. (eds.), Prosocial Motives, Emotions, and Behavior: The Better Angels of Our Nature (pp. 15–34). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beadle, J. N., Sheehan, A. H., Dahlben, B. and Gutchess, A. H. (2013). Aging, empathy and prosociality. Journal of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 702, 215–224.Google Scholar
Benjamin, D. J., Brown, S. A. and Shapiro, J. M. (2013). Who is ‘behavioral’? Cognitive ability and anomalous preferences. Journal of the European Economic Association, 11, 1231–1255.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowman, C. H. and Turnbull, O. H. (2003). Real versus facsimile reinforcers on the Iowa Gambling Task. Brain and Cognition, 53, 207–210.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burnham, T. C. (2003). Engineering altruism: a theoretical and experimental investigation of anonymity and gift giving. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 50, 133–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carstensen, L. L., Fung, H. H. and Charles, S. T. (2003). Socioemotional selectivity theory and the regulation of emotion in the second half of life. Motivation and Emotion, 27, 103–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charness, G. and Gneezy, U. (2008). What’s in a name? Anonymity and social distance in dictator and ultimatum games. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 68, 29–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, M. H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85.Google Scholar
Ebner, N. C., Riediger, M. and Lindenberger, U. (2010). FACES-A database of facial expressions in young, middle-aged, and older women and men: development and validation. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 351–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engel, C. (2011). Dictator games: a meta study. Experimental Economics, 14, 583–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E. and Fischbacher, U. (2002). Why social preferences matter-the impact of non-selfish motives on competition, cooperation and incentives. The Economic Journal, 112, C1–C33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E. and Schmidt, K. M. (1999). A theory of fairness, competition and cooperation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 817–868.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folstein, M. F., Folstein, S. E. and McHugh, P. R. (1975). Mini mental state: a practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 12, 189–198.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Forsythe, R., Horowitz, J. L., Savin, N. E. and Sefton, M. (1994). Fairness in simple bargaining experiments. Games and Economic Behavior, 6, 347–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frith, C. D. and Singer, T. (2008). The role of social cognition in decision making. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363, 3875–3886.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayes, A. F. (2013). Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach. New York, NY: Guilford Publications.Google Scholar
Henninger, D. E., Madden, D. J. and Huettel, S. A. (2010). Processing speed and memory mediate age-related differences in decision making. Psychology and Aging, 25, 262–270.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henry, J. D., Phillips, L. H., Ruffman, T. and Bailey, P. E. (2013). A meta-analytic review of age differences in theory of mind. Psychology and Aging, 28, 826–839.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hubbard, J., Harbaugh, W. T., Srivastava, S., Degras, D. and Mayr, U. (2016). A general benevolence dimension that links neural, psychological, economic, and life-span data on altruistic tendencies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 1351–1358.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huepe, D. and Salas, N. (2013). Fluid intelligence, social cognition, and perspective changing abilities as pointers of psychosocial adaptation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 287.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Imuta, K., Henry, J. D., Slaughter, V., Selcuk, B. and Ruffman, T. (2016). Theory of mind and prosocial behavior in childhood: a meta-analytic review. Developmental Psychology, 52, 1192–1205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Isaacowitz, D. M., Wadlinger, H. A., Goren, D. and Wilson, H. R. (2006). Is there an age-related positivity effect in visual attention? A comparison of two methodologies. Emotion, 6, 511–516.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kettner, S. E. and Waichman, I. (2016). Old age and prosocial behavior: social preferences or experimental confounds? Journal of Economic Psychology, 53, 118–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiiski, H. S., Cullen, B., Clavin, S. L. and Newell, F. N. (2016). Perceptual and social attributes underlining age-related preferences for faces. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 437.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kim, S. and Hasher, L. (2005). The attraction effect in decision making: superior performance by older adults. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58A, 120–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, S., Healey, M. K., Goldstein, D., Hasher, L. and Wiprzycka, U. J. (2008). Age differences in choice satisfaction: a positivity effect in decision making. Psychology and Aging, 23, 33–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kogut, T., Slovic, P. and Västfjäll, D. (2016). The effect of recipient identifiability and neediness on children’s sharing behavior. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 29, 353–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemerise, E. A. and Arsenio, W. F. (2000). An integrated model of emotion processes and cognition in social information processing. Child Development, 71, 107–118.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lim, K. T. K. and Yu, R. (2015). Aging and wisdom: age-related changes in economic and social decision making. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 7, 120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ma, H. K. and Leung, M. C. (1991). Altruistic orientation in children: construction and validation of the child altruism inventory. International Journal of Psychology, 26, 745–759.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malti, T., Gummerum, M., Ongley, S., Chaparro, M., Nola, M. and Bae, N. Y. (2015). “Who is worthy of my generosity?” Recipient characteristics and the development of children’s sharing. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 40, 31–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marchetti, A., Castelli, I., Harlé, K. M. and Sanfey, A. G. (2011). Expectations and outcome: the role of proposer features in the Ultimatum Game. Journal of Economic Psychology, 32, 446–449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mata, R., Josef, A. K., Samanez-Larkin, G. R. and Hertwig, R. (2011). Age differences in risky choice: a meta-analysis. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1235, 18–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mather, M. et al. (2012). Risk preferences and aging: the “certainty effect” in older adults’ decision making. Psychology and Aging, 27, 801–816.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McAdams, D. P., Diamond, A., de St. Aubin, E. and Mansfield, E. (1997). Stories of commitment: the psychosocial construction of generative lives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 678–694.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millet, K. and Dewitte, S. (2007). Altruistic behavior as a costly signal of general intelligence. Journal of research in Personality, 41, 316–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penner, L. A., Dovidio, J. F., Piliavin, J. A. and Schroeder, D. A. (2005). Prosocial behavior: multilevel perspectives. Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 365–392.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Preacher, K. J. and Hayes, A. F. (2008). Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 879–889.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Radloff, L. S. (1977). The CES-D scale: a self-report depression sale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 385–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raven, J., Court, J. H. and Raven, J. C. (1983). Manual for Raven’s Progressive Matrices and Vocabulary Scales (Section 3)– Standard Progressive Matrices. London: H. K. Lewis.Google Scholar
Redemacher, L., Salama, A., Gründer, G. and Spreckelmeyer, K. N. (2014). Differential patterns of nucleus accumbens activation during anticipation of monetary and social reward in young and older adults. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance, 9, 825–831.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rieger, M. and Mata, R. (2013). On the generality of age differences in social and nonsocial decision making. Journal of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 70, 200–212.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rilling, J. K. and Sanfey, A. G. (2011). The neuroscience of social decision-making. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 23–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roalf, D. R., Mitchell, S. H., Harbaugh, W. T. and Janowsky, J. S. (2012). Risk, reward and economic decision making in aging. Journal of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 67, 289–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salthouse, T. A. (2005). Effects of aging on reasoning. In Holyoak, K. J. and Morrison, R. G. (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Servátka, M. (2010). Does generosity generate generosity? An experimental study of reputation effects in a Dictator Game. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 39, 11–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singer, T. and Fehr, E. (2005). The neuroeconomics of mind reading and empathy. American Economic Review, 95, 340–345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sobel, M. E. (1986). Some new results on indirect effects and their standard errors in covariance structure models. In: Tuma, N. (ed.), Sociological Methodology. Washington, DC: American Psychology Association.Google Scholar
Sun, B., Luo, Z., Zhang, W., Li, W. and Li, X. (2017). Age-related differences in affective and cognitive empathy: self-report and performance-based evidence. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 4, 1–18.Google Scholar
Sze, J. A., Gyurak, A., Goodkind, M. S. and Levenson, R. W. (2012). Greater emotional empathy and prosocial behavior in late life. Emotion, 12, 1129–1140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thurstone, T. G. and Thurstone, L. L. (1963). Primary Mental Ability. Chicago, IL: Science Research Associates. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.Google Scholar
Weidman, C. S. and Strayhorn, J. M. (1992). Relationships between children’s prosocial behaviors and choices in story dilemmas. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 10, 330–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiepking, P. and James, R. N. III. (2013). Why are the oldest old less generous? Explanations for the unexpected age-related drop in charitable giving. Ageing and Society, 33, 486–510.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zebrowitz, L. A., Franklin, R. G., Hillman, S. and Boc, H. (2013). Older and younger adults’ first impressions from faces: similar in agreement but different in positivity. Psychology and Aging, 28, 202–212.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed