Life-Course Trajectories of Risk-Taking Propensity: A Coordinated Analysis of Longitudinal Studies

Adult age differences in risk perception and risk taking

Research on self-reported risk perception and risk taking suggests age-related decrements in risk preference, with older adults less likely to engage in general and domain-specific risk taking (i.e., in financial, health-related, ethical, career, and leisure contexts). Data relating to social risks, however, are inconsistent. With respect to behavioral risk-taking tasks, age-related differences vary depending on task characteristics and older adults' cognitive capacities. Specifically, older adults are less good at learning to take advantageous risks and take fewer risks when faced with gains, especially financial and mortality-based ones. We contextualize these trends by referencing relevant theoretical frameworks (see Frey et al., 2021 [1]) and by drawing on the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate recent examples of age-related differences in real-life risk responses.

The stability of physicians' risk attitudes across time and domains

Risk attitude is known to influence physicians' decision-making under uncertainty. Research on the risk attitudes of physicians is therefore important in facilitating a better understanding of physicians' decisions. However, little is known about the stability of physicians' risk attitudes across domains. Using five waves of data from a prospective panel study of Australian physicians from 2013 to 2017, we explored the stability of risk attitudes over a four-year period and examined the association between negative life events and risk attitudes among 4417 physicians. Further, we tested the stability of risk attitude across three domains most relevant to a physician's career and clinical decision-making (financial, career and clinical). The results showed that risk attitude was stable over time at both the mean and individual levels but the correlation between domains was modest. There were no significant associations between negative life events and risk attitude changes in all three domains. These findings suggest that risk attitude can be assumed to be constant but domain-specificity needs to be considered in analyses of physician decision-making.

Aging, uncertainty, and decision making-A review

There is a great deal of uncertainty in the world. One common source of uncertainty results from incomplete or missing information about probabilistic outcomes (i.e., outcomes that may occur), which influences how people make decisions. The impact of this type of uncertainty may particularly pronounced for older adults, who, as the primary leaders around the world, make highly impactful decisions with lasting outcomes. This review examines the ways in which uncertainty about probabilistic outcomes is perceived, handled, and represented in the aging brain, with an emphasis on how uncertainty may specifically affect decision making in later life. We describe the role of uncertainty in decision making and aging from four perspectives, including 1) theoretical, 2) self-report, 3) behavioral, and 4) neuroscientific. We report evidence of any age-related differences in uncertainty among these contexts and describe how these changes may affect decision making. We then integrate the findings across the distinct perspectives, followed by a discussion of important future directions for research on aging and uncertainty, including prospection, domain-specificity in risk-taking behaviors, and choice overload.