The Research On The Risk Propensity Of Older Adults On The Decision-making Under Ambiguity

China’s aging problem is getting worse and its elderly population will account for a larger proportion of the whole in the next30years.As to the physical and psychological functions decline throughout the years, the daily lives’quality of the elderly get worse. Therefore,research on older people’s cognitive and psychological changes in their daily lives have become a topic of great significance. Decision-making often occurs in elderly’s daily lives, and some of which have significant impacts on themselves,such that the elderly often have to make decisions on retirement plans, health insurance and other affairs. Before making a decision,the pros and cons of different options of many important decisions is unknown to elderly, leading the elderly to take risks. Some media have reported that the elderly suffered economic losses due to their declined ability in decision-making.In recent years, researchers abroad have studied decision-making in older people, especially the decision-making under uncertain conditions and researchers tend to utilize behavioral methods to measure decision-making under ambiguity, though results varies. Studies have shown that older adults were more risk averse relative to younger adults in the BART,but older adults were more risk seeking relative to young adults in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). IGT and BART are all decision making under ambiguity, but the results of IGT is opposed to the results obtained with the BART. Most of the exiting research separately measure risk propensity of elderly with IGT and BART. Risk propensity differences of subjects in the different studies may also resultde in Inconsistent results. In the first study,the subjects in the task of IGT and BART were the same. you can reduce the difference of subject.Recent results of IGT and BART is inconsist.Mata etal thought the possible causes was the difference of task characteristics.Rolison etal thought learning effect in BART influnced the age difference of risk taking。The learning effect of IGT and BART was different. The payoff of every card for all subjects was the same in IGT.but the explosive sequence of balloons was different for different subject,this resulted in different feedback to different subject.Different feedback leaded to different learning. This is an important distinction between BART and IGT. The explosive sequence of balloons in second research is fixed.The feedback to all subject is the same.The aim is to investigates impacts of explosive sequence of balloons for the old people’s risk taking on the BART task and compare with the results of risk propensity in IGT. Because of influences of experimental scenarios, behavior methods sometimes can not measure subjects’ initial risk propensity effectively.IN the third stuy, with the self-rating scale to measure risk propensity of the elderly, and to explore correlation relationship between older people’s self-rated risk-taking ability and risk-taking tendency on the decision-making under ambiguity.This study consists of three parts, by means of behavioral experiments and risk self-assessment scales to measure the risk propensity of the elderly.The first research includes experiments one and two. The experiment one study explored risk propensity of the older adults in the Iowa Gambling Task. Results show that:the difference of the risk propensity in IGT between the elderly and the young people is not significant, both are more risky seeking.The experiment two study explored risk propensity of the older adults in the balloon analogue risk task (BART). Results show that:(1)the difference of the risk propensity in IGT between the elderly and the young people is significant, the elderly are more risky averse.(2) Average inflatable number of unexploded balloons of elderly subjects and young subjects increase significantly from block1to block3in the BART.The second research investigates impacts of explosive sequence of balloons for the elderly on the BART task risk taking. Results showed that:(1) After controlling explosive sequence of balloons, age differences of risk propensity is still significant and elderly subjects is more risk averse than younger subjects.(2) Only in block1, the average inflatable number of unexploded balloons in the fixed explosive sequence is significantly more than that in the changing explosive sequence.(3) when the explosive sequence of balloons is fixed, the average inflatable number of unexploded balloon increases significantly from block2to block3, block1to block3, but not significantly from block1to block2.As to the third research, we conducted the self-rating scale measuring risk propensity of the elderly to explore the correlation relationship between self-assessment and behavior measurement of older adults’ risk propensity on the decision-making under ambiguity. Results show that:(1) The adventure scores and total scores of the elderly on17was lower than younger subjects significantly.(2) The experience-seeking scores and total scores of Elderly on SSSV was lower than younger subjects significantly.(3) Relationship between scores of the IGT and the17of all subjects was not significantly correlated. Relationship between scores of the IGT and the experience seeking of SSSV of all subjects was significantly correlated.(4) Relationship between scores of BART and adventure scores, total scores of Elderly on17of all subjects was significantly positively correlated. Relationship between scores of the BART and scores of the thrill and adventure seeking dimensions, total scores of elderly on SSSV of all subjects was significantly positively correlated.