Cognitive and Emotional Factors Influencing the Incorporation of Advice into Decision Making Across the Adult Lifespan

Tarren Leon, Gabrielle Weidemann, Ian I. Kneebone, Phoebe E. Bailey

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Objectives: The present study sought to investigate the influence of advice on decision making in older age, as well as the potential influence of depressive symptoms and age-related differences in the cognitively demanding emotion regulation on advice-taking. Method: A nonclinical sample (N = 156; 50% female; 47 young: M age = 29.87, standard deviation [SD] = 5.58; 54 middle-aged: M age = 50.91, SD = 7.13; 55 older: M age = 72.51, SD = 5.33) completed a judge-advisor task to measure degree of advice-taking, as well as measures of fluid intelligence, depressive symptoms, confidence, perceived advice accuracy, and emotion regulation. Results: Age did not influence degree of advice-taking. Greater depressive symptoms were associated with more reliance on advice, but only among individuals who identified as emotion regulators. Interestingly, older age was associated with perceiving advice to be less accurate. Discussion: The study contributes to the sparse literature on advice-taking in older age. Cognitive and emotional factors influence the degree to which advice is incorporated into decision making in consistent ways across the adult lifespan. A key difference is that older adults take as much advice as younger adults despite perceiving the advice to be less accurate.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbergbae080
Number of pages0
JournalJournal of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
Volume79
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Keywords

  • Judge-advisor
  • Decision making
  • Depression
  • Advice-taking
  • Emotion regulation

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