NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Far more attention has been paid to emotion regulation in childhood than in adulthood and old age. However, a growing body of empirical research suggests that the emotion domain is largely spared from deleterious processes associated with aging and points instead to developmental gains in later life. By applying tenets from socioemotional selectivity theory, we attempt to explain the observed gains in terms of motivation. We argue that age is associated with increasing motivation to derive emotional meaning from life and decreasing motivation to expand one's horizons. These changes lead to age differences in social and environmental choices (consistent with antecedent emotion regulation), coping (consistent with response-focused regulation), and cognitive processing of positive and negative information (consistent with goal-directed attention and memory). Broader implications for life-span development are discussed.

Socioemotional Selectivity Theory and the Regulation of Emotion in the Second Half of Life

The following article presents the theoretical model of strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) to explain factors that influence emotion regulation and emotional well-being across adulthood. The model posits that trajectories of adult development are marked by age-related enhancement in the use of strategies that serve to avoid or limit exposure to negative stimuli but by age-related vulnerabilities in situations that elicit high levels of sustained emotional arousal. When older adults avoid or reduce exposure to emotional distress, they often respond better than younger adults; when they experience high levels of sustained emotional arousal, however, age-related advantages in emotional well-being are attenuated, and older adults are hypothesized to have greater difficulties returning to homeostasis. SAVI provides a testable model to understand the literature on emotion and aging and to predict trajectories of emotional experience across the adult life span.

/pdf/strength-and-vulnerability-integration-a-model-of-emotional-fawcwwzvyf.pdf

Strength and vulnerability integration: a model of emotional well-being across adulthood.

Employee Retirement: A Review and Recommendations for Future Investigation

Gender and age differences in emotion regulation strategies and their relationship to depressive symptoms

Differences in problem-solving strategies for situations varying in three domains, consumer, home management, and conflict with friends, were examined among younger, middle-aged, and older adults. In addition, this study examined the influence of perceived ability to resolve the problem, controllability, and causal attributions on strategy selection. In the 2 instrumental domains, older adults were more problem focused in their approach than adolescents and younger adults, whereas adolescents and younger adults selected more passive-dependent strategies. In the more interpersonal domain, conflict with friends, older adults tended to select avoidant-denial strategies more so than younger adults. Finally, across domains, the greater the perceived ability to resolve a problem the less the avoidant-denial strategy was selected. The importance of distinguishing between social and instrumental problem solving and of examining the cognitive appraisal of a problem situation are discussed.

Everyday problem solving across the adult life span: influence of domain specificity and cognitive appraisal.

The present study examined age differences in financial decision-making. Fourteen young adults and 14 older adults participated in a simulated Yard Sale, in which they were asked to sell a series of objects at the highest price possible when three offers were randomly and sequentially presented. In addition, participants performed a working memory task. No age differences were found in the total monetary earning, in spite of significant age differences in working memory capacities. Furthermore, both young and older adults used heuristic strategies in the Yard Sale task and outperformed computer simulations using a random guess strategy. Finally, older adults were more likely than young adults to use a single-deal strategy and were more consistent in using this "satisficing heuristic," perhaps to compensate for their reduced working memory capacities.

Age differences in financial decision-making: using simple heuristics

This study used a false information paradigm to study age differences in the correction of social judgments. Younger and older adults read 2 criminal reports, with true information printed in black and false information in red. Following the reports, all participants were asked to recommend prison terms among other ratings. Age differences in baseline measures were also assessed by corresponding control groups who read only true information. Compared with younger adults under full attention, older adults under full attention and younger adults under divided attention were reliably influenced by the nature of the false statements (either extenuating or exacerbating the severity of the crimes). When contrasted with their relevant control groups, older adults under full attention and younger adults under divided attention failed to correct their social judgments. This study lends support to a processing resource explanation for age differences in the correction process for social judgments.

Unwanted thought: Age differences in the correction of social judgments.

The present study examined age and cultural differences in cognitive and affective components of subjective well-being. A sample of 188 American and Chinese young and older adults completed surveys measuring self-life satisfaction, perceived family's life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. Across cultures, older adults reported lower negative affect than did young adults. Americans reported higher self-life satisfaction, perceived family's life satisfaction, and positive affect than did Chinese. In addition, perceived family's life satisfaction was more related to self-life satisfaction for Chinese than for Americans. Findings are discussed in light of socioemotional selectivity theory and theories on culture and self-construal.

Cross-cultural aging in cognitive and affective components of subjective well-being.

This study examined the influences of cognitive resources and motivation on how young and older adults process different quantities of persuasive arguments. In the first experiment session, both young and older adults rated their attitudes toward marijuana legalization and capital punishment. After a week, they read either 3 or 9 similar-quality arguments supporting marijuana legalization and capital punishment. Half of participants were assigned to the high-involvement condition (i.e., told that they were going to discuss the arguments later with the experimenter) and the other half were assigned to the low-involvement condition (i.e., given no instructions). After reading the arguments, participants rated their attitudes toward those 2 social issues again. Highly involved young adults changed their attitudes regardless of the quantity of arguments, whereas lowly involved young adults' attitude change was influenced by the argument quantity. Older adults in both high-involvement and low-involvement conditions changed their attitudes according to the argument quantity. Working memory was found to mediate the age effects on attitude change. This finding demonstrated the importance of a cognitive mechanism in accounting for age differences in attitude change.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2639791_code2181894.pdf?abstractid=2639791&mirid=2

Yiwei Chen

Papers

Everyday problem solving across the adult life span: influence of domain specificity and cognitive appraisal.

Age differences in financial decision-making: using simple heuristics

Unwanted thought: Age differences in the correction of social judgments.

Cross-cultural aging in cognitive and affective components of subjective well-being.

Age Differences in Attitude Change: Influences of Cognitive Resources and Motivation on Responses to Argument Quantity