Risky decision-making is associated with residential choice in healthy older adults

As our society becomes more mobile and people reside farther away from their immediate families, competent decision-making has become critical for the older adults wishing to maintain their independence. However, very little is known about the relationship between residential choice and decision-making. Here we use the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) to examine risk-taking in two samples of older adults, one living in a retirement community and another living independently. We also used a cognitive model to gain insight into the cognitive factors underlying decision-making in these groups. We found that older adults living in a retirement community were more risk averse than their independent counterparts. Furthermore, this difference appeared to be motivated by group differences in initial perception of risk. This study suggests an intriguing difference between these two residential groups, and also points to the utility of using laboratory methods in research on real-world problems.