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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 9, 2025

Quantifying Social Motivation in Mice Using Operant Conditioning
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Aging Increases Prosocial Motivation for Effort.

Patricia L Lockwood1,2,3,4, Ayat Abdurahman2,3,5, Anthony S Gabay1,2,3

  • 1Centre for Human Brain Health, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham.

Psychological Science
|April 16, 2021
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Older adults show increased prosociality, exerting more effort to help others than younger adults. This finding highlights age-related shifts in willingness to exert effort for the benefit of others.

Keywords:
agingcomputational modelingeffortmotivationopen dataprosocial behaviorreward

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive psychology
  • Social neuroscience
  • Aging research

Background:

  • Social cohesion is vital, particularly in aging societies.
  • Prosociality, or helping others, is crucial for social cohesion.
  • Understanding age-related changes in the willingness to exert effort for self and others is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate age differences in the willingness to exert physical effort for self-benefit versus other-benefit.
  • To explore how effort exertion for prosocial acts changes across the adult lifespan.

Main Methods:

  • Computational modeling was used to assess effort-based decision-making.
  • 95 younger adults (18-36 years) and 92 older adults (55-84 years) participated.
  • Participants chose to exert grip strength (30%-70% max) for self or other rewards.

Main Results:

  • Younger adults showed more self-benefiting choices at higher effort levels.
  • Younger adults exerted less physical force for prosocial acts compared to self-benefiting acts.
  • Older adults demonstrated greater willingness to exert effort for others than younger adults.
  • Older adults exerted similar levels of force for self and other benefits.

Conclusions:

  • Older adults exhibit enhanced prosocial effort compared to younger adults.
  • Age-related increases in prosociality have significant implications for social behavior and societal structures.
  • Findings suggest a potential shift in motivational priorities with age, favoring altruistic actions.