Aging and Decision Making: Empirical and Applied Perspectives

Decisions large and small play a fundamental role in shaping life course trajectories of health and well-being: decisions draw upon an individual's capacity for self-regulation and self-control, their ability to keep long-term goals in mind, and their willingness to place appropriate value on their future well-being. Aging and Decision Making addresses the specific cognitive and affective processes that account for age-related changes in decision making, targeting interventions to compensate for vulnerabilities and leverage strengths in the aging individual.

This book focuses on four dominant approaches that characterize the current state of decision-making science and aging - neuroscience, behavioral mechanisms, competence models, and applied perspectives. Underscoring that choice is a ubiquitous component of everyday functioning, Aging and Decision Making examines the implications of how we invest our limited social, temporal, psychological, financial, and physical resources, and lays essential groundwork for the design of decision supportive interventions for adaptive aging that take into account individual capacities and context variables.

• Divided into four dominant approaches that characterize the current state of decision-making science and aging neuroscience
• Explores the impact of aging on the linkages between cortical structures/functions and the behavioral indices of decision-making
• Examines the themes associated with behavioral approaches that attempt integrations of methods, models, and theories of general decision-making with those derived from the study of aging
• Details the changes in underlying competencies in later life and the two prevailing themes that have emerged―one, the general individual differences perspective, and two, a more clinical focus

Thomas M. Hess, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at North Carolina State University who studies aging and cognitive functioning. His research on aging, judgment, and decision processes has been funded by NIH. He is Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, and Gerontological Society of America.

JoNell Strough, Ph.D., is a life-span developmental psychologist and professor at West Virginia University. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, a member of the Scientific Research Network on Decision Neuroscience and Aging and other scientific associations, and has received research funding from the National Institute on Aging.

Corinna E. Löckenhoff, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of human development at Cornell University and studies emotions, social relations, and decision making from a life-span perspective. Her work is supported by the National Institute on Aging and she has been named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science.