Decision-Making Strategies and Performance among Seniors
Tibor Besedeš, Cary Deck, Sudipta Sarangi, Mikhael Shor
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 2012, 81(2), 524—533
Abstract
Using paper and pencil experiments administered in senior centers, we examine decision-making performance in multi-attribute decision problems. We differentiate the effects of declining cognitive performance and changing cognitive process on decision-making performance of seniors as they age. We find a significant decline in performance with age due to reduced reliance on common heuristics and increased decision-making randomness among our oldest subjects. However, we find that increasing the number of options in a decision problem increases the number of heuristics brought to the task. This challenges the choice overload view that people give up when confronted with too much choice.
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