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How to Model Age-Related Motivational Reorientations in Risky Choice

Depping and Freund [this issue] provide food for thought by offering an account of how age-related motivational changes may translate into changes in decision processes. In a nutshell, their ‘loss prevention’ account goes like this: first, the aging decision maker faces a normal decline of resources, may they be cognitive (e.g., memory), social (e.g., death of loved ones), sensorimotor (e.g., hearing) or physical (e.g., health) in nature; second, experiencing this decline across domains, the decision maker’s motivation (goal orientation or aspiration level) transforms from accruing gains to preventing or slowing-down losses; third, this reorientation amplifies his or her awareness of the potential of losses. In this commentary, we put Depping and Freund’s proposal in context with other life span motivational theories and suggest ways to test the notion that the aging decision maker’s motivational reorientation prompts changes in the valuation of gains and losses in decision making. Choice under risk is one of the key topics of psychology and economics’ research in decision making. It also offers a test bed for Depping and Freund’s account because it allows researchers the detailed analyses of behavior in gain and loss domains as well as of possible asymmetries between the two. The valuation of gains and losses is the focus of Depping and Freund’s as well as other motivational theories, for instance, Carstensen’s [2006] socioemotional selectivity theory. Although some empirical work has already been conducted to understand the development of risky choice across the life span [see the review by Depping & Freund, this issue; Mata, Josef, Samanez-Larkin, & Hertwig, 2011], the still small number of studies and the heterogeneous findings do not afford us to arrive at clear-cut conclusions regarding the role of adaptive motivational reorientation on age differences in risky choice. In light of this still early state of the research field, we believe that both more concep-