Decision-Making Strategies and Performance Among Seniors

Tibor Besedes, Cary A. Deck, Sudipta Sarangi, Mikhael Shor
2011 Social Science Research Network  
Using paper and pencil experiments administered in senior centers, we examine decision-making performance in multi-attribute decision problems. We differentiate the effects of declining cognitive performance and changing cognitive process on decision-making performance of seniors as they age. We find a significant decline in performance with age due to reduced reliance on common heuristics and increased decision-making randomness among our oldest subjects. However, we find that increasing the
more » ... mber of options in a decision problem increases the number of heuristics brought to the task. This challenges the choice overload view that people give up when confronted with too much choice. JEL classification: C91, D03, I18
doi:10.2139/ssrn.1750565 fatcat:tymxekz3ebg3dhkfx4t7gbsrsy