Listen to your elders! Study shows old people really DO have more wisdom than youth

Wisdom really does come from experience.
A new study has found adults aged 60 and over are better at strategising their decisions than those in their late teens and early 20s, who tend to focus on instant gratification.
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University said the findings contradict negative stereotypes elders lose mental edge and reasoning ability with age, showing they are able to make better decisions under some conditions. 

Wise as an owl: New findings contradict negative stereotypes elders lose mental edge and reasoning ability with age

Findings from the study, led by Darrell Worthy, professor of psychology at Texas A&M University, and co-authored by University of Texas at Austin psychologist Todd Maddox, will be published in Psychological Science.
Mr Maddox said the study gives insight into the decision-making process, which will help researchers learn more about the effects of ageing in the brain.

 

He said in a statement issued by the University of Texas: 'Broadly, these results suggest that younger adults may behave more impulsively, favouring immediate gains, while older adults are better at considering the long-term ramifications of their actions.'
As part of the study, 28 older adults and 28 younger counterparts performed decision-making tasks, in which they only needed to consider immediate rewards to earn points. In this experiment, the younger adults were more efficient at selecting the options that yielded the best short-term rewards.

Sagel: Researchers said the study gives insight into the decision-making process, which will help researchers learn more about the effects of ageing in the brain

However, in a second experiment, the older participants outperformed the younger group in choosing options that resulted in long-term gains, such as strategically storing the most amount of oxygen in "oxygen accumulators" on an imaginary space mission in Mars. In this portion of the study, 52 older adults (ages 67-82) and 51 younger adults (ages 20-26) performed decision-making tasks in which the choices they made influenced future rewards.

IT'S NOT YOUR IMAGINATION - WE DO SHRINK WITH AGE

A recent study reveals most men and women will shrink between the ages of 30 and 70.
The average man will lose and inch while women lose two. And by age 80, both men and women average another inch shorter, according a study published in Oxford Journals.
Researchers studied 2,084 men and women aged 17-94 years enrolled from 1958 to 1993 in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, Baltimore, Maryland. For both sexes, height loss began at about age 30 years and accelerated with increasing age.
They say as people age, bones shrink in density and size, and discs along the spine become squished, leading to a loss in height.
Researchers warn, however, shrinking too fast could be a sign of health problems. Men who lose more than two inches in two years have been shown to have an increased risk of suffering from heart disease or breaking a hip bone.

As part of the experiment, the researchers created a test with two oxygen extraction systems on Mars. The rewards depended on the respondents' previous choices. The respondents had to choose from two options: the "increasing option," which increased rewards in future trials, and the "decreasing option," which decreased future rewards but offered a larger immediate reward. In each permutation of the experiment, the older participants outperformed the younger group by figuring out which option led to the most long-term cumulative rewards.

Mr Maddox said: 'We found that younger adults performed equivalently in the experiment, but older adults were more adept at adjusting their strategy to fit the goals of the task.'

The researchers suggest these results provide insight into how people use their brains as they age. When making choices, younger people use the ventral striatum, a region of the brain associated with habit formation and immediate rewards. As this declines with age, the psychologists theorize that people compensate by using their prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that controls rational and deliberate thoughts.

To test this theory, Mr Maddox and his team of researchers are conducting a neuroimaging study to determine which parts of the brain respond to immediate gratification and long-term rewards while the participants engage in decision-making tasks.

Collaborators on the study include University of Texas psychologists David Schnyer, Jennifer Pacheco and Marissa Gorlick.