Age Differences in Trade-off Decisions: Different Strategies but Similar Outcomes

The primary purpose of this study was to examine age differences in processing strategies of emotionally difficult trade-off decisions. In addition, the study tested the relevant contributions of the cognitive and emotional mechanisms to age differences in processing strategies. Altogether, 40 younger adults and 40 older adults were randomly assigned to either a high or low emotionally difficult condition of a car-purchasing decision task. MouselabWEB software was used to trace participants' processing strategies. Results showed that older adults were more likely to use attribute-based processing strategies, whereas younger adults were more likely to use alternative-based processing strategies in the high-emotion condition. In the low-emotion condition, on the other hand, both younger and older adults preferred to use alternative-based processing strategies. Furthermore, the results suggested that the cognitive measure (i.e., digit symbol coding) was not correlated with the age effects on processing strategies.