Does age mediate susceptibility to cognitive biases?
I'm in way over my head on this one and I invite reader thoughts and comments.
I asked myself the question after reading these:
So who is more likely to commit or avoid the sunk-cost fallacy and why? In a recent study, psychologists JoNell Strough, Clare Mehta, Joseph McFall and Kelly Schuller from West Virginia University found that younger adults were more likely to commit to a situation if they had already invested money into it, and that older adults showed a more balanced fiscal perspective of the same situation.
And:
Studies of the framing effect indicate that individuals are risk averse for decisions framed as gains but risk seeking for decisions framed as losses. However, findings regarding age-related changes in susceptibility to framing are mixed. Recent work demonstrating age-related decreases in reactivity to anticipated monetary losses, but not gains, suggests that older and younger adults might show equivalent risk aversion for gains but discrepant risk seeking for losses. In the current study, older and younger adults completed a monetary gambling task in which they chose between sure options and risky gambles (the expected outcomes of which were equated). Although both groups demonstrated risk aversion in the gain frame, only younger adults showed risk seeking in the loss frame.
Is this improvement by learning or just semi-random changes? To what degree can we implicitly overcome these biases and become more rational? Do we want to? Thoughts?
For an accessbile intro to cognitive bias check out Predictably Irrational and Dan Ariely's new book The Upside of Irrationality.
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