Age Differences in Prosocial Behavior Depend on Effort Costs

This study examined age differences in willingness to engage in effortful and effortless prosocial behavior for a fully anonymous recipient.

Participants were recruited through the Prolific online recruitment platform. In Experiment 1, older (N = 46) and younger (N = 65) adults completed the "pay-it-forward" effortful decision-making task with fixed effort demands and a version of the Dictator Game, an effortless prosocial decision-making task. In Experiment 2, older (N = 38) and younger (N = 42) adults completed the Dictator Game and a modified pay-it-forward decision-making task in which effort demands were calibrated to one's ability.

In both Experiments 1 and 2, older adults were more prosocial than younger adults on the effortless Dictator Game. In Experiment 1, older adults were less prosocial across all trials of the effortful pay-it-forward task. However, when the task was more achievable in Experiment 2, older adults were only less prosocial when the probability of a reward was low.

In everyday life, many prosocial contexts depend on effort expenditure. When prosocial activities are effortful, older adults are less willing to engage in prosocial behavior, particularly when reward likelihood is low, and instead focus on resource conservation. In the absence of such effort costs, older adults are more prosocial than younger adults. This work suggests that older adults may prefer to engage in prosocial behavior more than younger adults, but physical resource constraints may limit their ability to engage in such effortful prosocial activities.