AGE AND CHOICE-INDUCED PREFERENCE CHANGE

Abstract

Research on emotional regulation and regret in aging has provided reasons to expect that older adults may have a heightened sensitivity to dissonance effects, which could motivate a greater choice-induced preference change. Yet, no studies exist that has directly examined age differences in this preference change. To address this, a modified version of free choice paradigm was tested on both the young and old and included choice trials of two-options and seven-options to test age differences across different number of options. In the present study, participants first rated the preference of food items and then made a choice between food items that they have rated similarly, following which they rerated the food items. Results showed that overall older adults are consistently more susceptible to showing a greater degree of post-decisional preference change, regardless of the number of options. Our results suggest that choice-induced preference change could be a protective strategy that older adults engage in to help regulate emotions when making difficult decisions in older age. Policy makers should also be aware of such heightened choice-induced preference effect when designing choice structures for the elderly to guide better lifestyle choices.