Effect of Ambiguity on Probabilistic, Temporal and Effort Discounting Across Adulthood
- Galston Wong, UT Dallas
- Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
Many real-world decisions contain some degree of ambiguity, where the information provided about the cost (e.g. how long it will take, how much effort is required, or the likelihood the outcome will be realized) is vague or unknown (Ellsberg, 1961). While many studies have investigated ambiguous risks, few studies have looked at decisions for ambiguous time delays and ambiguous effort. Even less is known about how aging may influence such ambiguity preferences. This project seeks to address two main research aims. First, it will examine how one individual’s ambiguity preferences may differ across decision domains of probability, time, and effort. Secondly, it will examine how aging influences these ambiguity preferences across the three decision domains. Ultimately, this project seeks to address the lack of research examining the effects of aging and ambiguity preferences, beyond the scope of probabilistic decision making.
Emotion Prediction Errors in Social Decisions Across the Lifespan
- Colleen Frank, UT Dallas
- Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
The mind is skilled at making predictions. These predictions play a role in many higher order cognitive processes because the difference between predicted and experienced rewards – or reward prediction error – has been shown to drive learning and guide future decisions. However, prediction about future rewards is not the only form of prospection used when making choices. Predictions of future emotional experiences, sometimes known as affective forecasting, also drive decision making. We will investigate the extent to which the relative impact of emotion prediction error and reward prediction error on punitive choice decisions change across adulthood. These findings will give us a better understanding about how people use predictions of their future feelings to make social decisions and how this prospection may change across adulthood.
Diverse Facial Stimulus Database
- Jared Cortez, UT Dallas
- Sera Gonzalez, UT Dallas
- Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
Psychology and neuroscience research typically lack racial diversity in terms of editing, writing, and participation (Roberts et al., 2020; Abiodun 2019). With some notable exceptions, this lack of diversity in participation also extends into the stimuli used in lab-based studies. Several years ago, Natalie Ebner and her colleagues at The Max Planck Institute for Human Development created a database of facial expression stimuli that included younger, middle-aged, and older adults (FACES). Increasing the age diversity in facial stimuli has greatly facilitated the study of emotion, motivation, and cognition across the adult life span. However, this stimuli set is limited to white men and women. In this project we seek to extend this data set by creating a new diverse FACES data featuring images of canonical emotional expressions from young, middle-aged, and older African American/Black and Hispanic/Latinx individuals.
This study is funded by an internal BBS Pilot Grant to KLS and NIH Diversity supplement to SG.
Psychological Mechanisms of Skewed Decision Making Across Adulthood
- Galston Wong, UT Dallas
- Israel Smitherman, UT Dallas
- Colleen Frank, UT Dallas
- Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
- Derek Isaacowitz, Northeastern University
Each year, 1 out of every 18 older adults is the victim of financial fraud, resulting in estimated losses of $37 billion. These older adults are likely targeted because of this age group’s growing size, affluence, and power. Thus, it is important to understand why older adults sometimes make decisions that are different than younger adults because these age-related differences in decision making have enormous social and economic consequences. Our overall goal is to identify the psychological mechanisms that underlie age differences in risky decision making over the adult life span. This mechanistic focus will generate critical insight about aging and decision making that will guide the development of interventions to improve decision strategies in vulnerable older adults. This project will also seek to increase financial literacy in the general public by developing accessible educational materials appropriate for the adult general public.
This study is funded by NSF.
Do Age Differences in Associative Learning and Stimulus Generalization Lead to Age Differences in Trust?
- Brittany Cassidy, UNC-Greensboro
- Lauren H. Lilly, UT Dallas
- Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
- Jessica Cooper, Emory University
- Jamie J. Castrellon, UPenn
- Alex Christensen, UNC-Greensboro
When meeting others, people make quick decisions on whether to trust people or not that affect decision-making and that pose serious consequences for physical, interpersonal, and financial well-being. However, older adults exhibit excessive trust relative to younger adults and this excessive trust leaves older adults particularly such serious consequences, including financial fraud. One explanation for their excessive trust is that older adults may learn to trust differently than do younger adults. The study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine this possibility at both the behavioral and neural levels.
This study is funded by SRNDNA. OSF preregistration includes details about the hypotheses and study design.