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Neural and behavioral bases of age differences in perceptions of trust
Abstract
Older adults are disproportionately vulnerable to fraud, and federal agencies have speculated that excessive trust explains their greater vulnerability. Two studies, one behavioral and one using neuroimaging methodology, identified age differences in trust and their neural underpinnings. Older and younger adults rated faces high in trust cues similarly, but older adults perceived faces with cues to untrustworthiness to be significantly more trustworthy and approachable than younger adults. This age-related pattern was mirrored in neural activation to cues of trustworthiness. Whereas younger adults showed greater anterior insula activation to untrustworthy versus trustworthy faces, older adults showed muted activation of the anterior insula to untrustworthy faces. The insula has been shown to support interoceptive awareness that forms the basis of "gut feelings," which represent expected risk and predict risk-avoidant behavior. Thus, a diminished "gut" response to cues of untrustworthiness may partially underlie older adults' vulnerability to fraud.
... These previous neuroimaging studies, however, have comprised young adults only, but there is emerging evidence of age-related differences in face trustworthiness evaluation, in that older adults may rate faces overall as more trustworthiness than young adults (Zebrowitz et al., 2013. This age effect was particularly pronounced for untrustworthy-looking faces, while young and older adults gave comparable ratings for trustworthy-looking faces (Castle et al., 2012;Zebrowitz et al., 2017;Cassidy et al., 2019; see Bailey and Leon, 2019 for a meta-analysis). This observation is consistent with findings that advanced age was associated with decreased sensitivity to deceptive cues (Ruffman et al., 2012;Frazier et al., 2021; see also Ebner et al., 2022, for a summary) and evidence of an age-related positivity effect (i.e., observed in the form of reduced negativity/increased positivity in older vs. young adults' attention and memory; Carstensen et al., 2011;Pehlivanoglu and Verhaeghen, 2019;Ziaei et al., 2019Ziaei et al., , 2021. ...
... Previous studies have reported comparable findings (i.e., relatively more favorable ratings for untrustworthy-looking faces from older than young adults; Castle et al., 2012;Zebrowitz et al., 2017;Cassidy et al., 2019; see also Bailey et al., 2016). Our study importantly qualifies this previous work by demonstrating that higher trustworthiness ratings were only given for somewhat untrustworthy-looking faces, but not for very untrustworthylooking faces. ...
... In fact, supporting this interpretation, ambivalent information requires rather complex cognitive operations such as interference resolution (e.g., attending to specific aspects of a stimulus while ignoring (salient) other aspects; Stanley and Blanchard-Fields, 2008;O'Connor et al., 2019). Given age-related decline in working memory (Pehlivanoglu et al., 2014; for a meta-analysis see, Bopp and Verhaeghen, 2007) combined with age-related reduction in sensitivity to deceptive cues (Castle et al., 2012) and an increased positivity effect with age (Carstensen and Mikels, 2005), older participants may have had difficulty in focusing on cues of untrustworthiness while filtering out cues of trustworthiness in ambiguously untrustworthy-looking faces. In line with this explanation, other studies showed that older compared to young adults used fewer negative words to describe ambiguous scenarios (Juang and Knight, 2016;Mikels and Shuster, 2016) and gave more positive evaluations to ambiguous facial expressions (i.e., surprise; Neta and Tong, 2016;Neta et al., 2018). ...
The amygdala has been shown to be responsive to face trustworthiness. While older adults typically give higher face trustworthiness ratings than young adults, a direct link between amygdala response and age-related differences in face trustworthiness evaluation has not yet been confirmed. Additionally, there is a possible modulatory role of the neuropeptide oxytocin in face trustworthiness evaluation, but the results are mixed and effects unexplored in aging. To address these research gaps, young, and older adults were randomly assigned to oxytocin or placebo self-administration via a nasal spray before rating faces on trustworthiness while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. There was no overall age-group difference in face trustworthiness ratings, but older compared to young participants gave higher trustworthiness ratings to ambivalently untrustworthy-looking faces. In both age groups, lower face trustworthiness ratings were associated with higher left amygdala activity. A comparable negative linear association was observed in right amygdala but only among young participants. Also, in the right amygdala, lower and higher, compared to moderate, face trustworthiness ratings were associated with greater right amygdala activity (i.e., positive quadratic (U-shaped) association) for both age groups. Neither the behavioral nor the brain effects were modulated by a single dose of intranasal oxytocin administration, however. These results suggest dampened response to faces with lower trustworthiness among older compared to young adults, supporting the notion of reduced sensitivity to cues of untrustworthiness in aging. The findings also extend evidence of an age-related positivity effect to the evaluation of face trustworthiness.
... Trust behaviors toward others seem to increase with age (e.g., Alesina and La Ferrara, 2002). Older adults tend to trust more frequently in people with a reputation of being untrustworthy than young adults (e.g., Bailey et al., 2015; although see Sutter and Kocher, 2007), which makes them more vulnerable to subsequent exploitation and fraud (e.g., Castle et al., 2012). Accordingly, studies based on facial trustworthiness evaluations report that even though there is a high agreement on the ratings provided by older and young adults, the former tend to perceive faces as more trustworthy (Castle et al., 2012;Cassidy et al., 2019). ...
... Older adults tend to trust more frequently in people with a reputation of being untrustworthy than young adults (e.g., Bailey et al., 2015; although see Sutter and Kocher, 2007), which makes them more vulnerable to subsequent exploitation and fraud (e.g., Castle et al., 2012). Accordingly, studies based on facial trustworthiness evaluations report that even though there is a high agreement on the ratings provided by older and young adults, the former tend to perceive faces as more trustworthy (Castle et al., 2012;Cassidy et al., 2019). These studies used a relatively small number of faces and collected a relatively small number of ratings per age group. ...
... In particular, as put forth in CISDA, decisions about deception involve reasoning about the intentions of others, requiring theory of mind in one-to-one social interactions (Beadle et al., 2012). Extending this model to social communication via news, analytical reasoning is required when assessing others' true intentions through news media communication (Bronstein et al., 2019; and may buffer the impact of age-related decline in other cognitive functions on deception detection (e.g., sensitivity to cues of untrustworthiness; Castle et al., 2012;Frazier et al., 2021). Under CISDA, affect refers to the interpretation of stimuli and contexts to align with one's affective state and motivational goals; with evidence supporting that aging is associated with prioritization of emotional goals (Carstensen & DeLiema, 2018;Pehlivanoglu & Verhaeghen, 2019). ...
Increasing misinformation spread poses a threat to older adults but there is little research on older adults within the fake news literature. Embedded in the Changes in Integration for Social Decisions in Aging (CISDA) model, this study examined the role of (a) analytical reasoning; (b) affect; (c) news consumption frequency, and their interplay with (d) news content on news veracity detection in aging. Conducted during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the present study asked participants to view and evaluate COVID or non-COVID (i.e., everyday) news articles, followed by measures of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency. News veracity detection was comparable between young and older adults. Additionally, fake news detection for non-COVID news was predicted by individual differences in analytic reasoning for both age groups. However, chronological age effects in fake news detection emerged within the older adult sample and interacted with the CISDA-derived components of analytical reasoning, affect, and news consumption frequency by news content. Collectively, these findings suggest that age-related vulnerabilities to deceptive news are only apparent in very old age. Our findings advance understanding of psychological mechanisms in news veracity detection in aging. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... The moderated interaction of OT and age extended to volunteering as well. Seniors have been shown to volunteer more often than younger people (Castle et al., 2012;Sze et al., 2012;Wiles and Jayasinha, 2013;Beadle et al., 2015;Matsumoto et al., 2016). The parametric relationship for volunteering along with the other prosocial behaviors, reveals the strength of the relationship of OT and age. ...
Helping behaviors and life satisfaction generally increase after middle-age. Identifying the neural substrates of prosocial behaviors in older adults may offer additional insights into these changes over the lifespan. The present study examines the endogenous release of the neuromodulator oxytocin (OT) in participants aged 18–99 and its relationship to prosocial behaviors. OT has been shown to influence trust, altruism, charity, and generosity, yet the effect of age on OT release has not been well-established. Blood samples before and after a video stimulus were obtained from 103 participants in order to examine the impact of OT on prosocial behaviors. We found that OT release following a social prime increased with age (r = 0.49, p = 0.001) and that OT moderated the relationship between age and donations to charity. We tested for robustness by examining three additional prosocial behaviors, money and goods donated to charity during the past year and social-sector volunteering. OT moderated the impact of age on all three prosocial behaviors (ps < 0.05). The analysis also showed that participants’ change in OT was positively associated with satisfaction with life (p = 0.04), empathic concern (p = 0.015), dispositional gratitude (p = 0.019), and religious commitment (p = 0.001). Our findings indicate that the neural chemistry that helps sustain social relationships and live a fulfilled life appear to strengthen with age.
... The protocol includes toxicity regulation, exercise, diet, sleep and stress -all factors that are affected by a person's environment e.g., noise and pollution levels, availability of fresh foods, walkability and safety of neighbourhoods. If successful at the clinical trial stage this approach would represent a major breakthrough for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases where pharmaceutical interventions have failed.Age effects of cognitive embodiment are also proving to be important in social interactions; evidence shows that older people have an increased perception of trust(Castle et al., 2012) ...
Within geography, situated, contextualised and contingent embodiment is a central theme in Non‐Representational Theory, mobility theories, feminist, affective and emotional geographies. Despite this focus on the body, engagement with the strong embodiment hypotheses emerging out of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy has been limited to only selective theoretical borrowings with practically no attention given to the burgeoning empirical evidence of the relationship between body, mind and environment. While the neural turn within the discipline has been acknowledged, the flow of influence is deemed as largely unidirectional, where ‘brain culture’ pays scant attention to the contingencies of spatial lives (Pykett, 2018). At the same time, geographers have been critical of the universalising tendencies and narrow empiricism of neuroscience. This paper advocates for a rapprochement between geography and neuroscience following Barad’s (2007) agential realist approach. Using the geographies of ageing as a case that has relevance across the discipline, cognitive embodiments are understood as body‐mind‐environment assemblages that continuously co‐constitute material difference, constraint and possibility for bodies as they age. A focus on recent studies of embodied ageing which show cognition to be both embodied and inherently spatial is used to inspire a critical neuro‐geography which rethinks ageing in place, age‐friendly cities, and age‐related public health interventions, such as those for the COVID‐19 crisis. The paper aims to inspire further critical neuro‐geographies that think through body‐mind‐environment assemblages and material‐discursive intra‐actions without separating mind/body or nature/culture.
... Additionally, older adults are more likely to trust others. They tend to perceive sellers or persuaders as trustworthy and judge a product according to their impression of the seller rather than the product itself (Castle et al., 2012;Ruffman et al., 2012). Correspondingly, we can infer that older adults may be more concerned about social cues and other people's attention. ...
Social cues, such as being watched, can subtly alter fund investment choices. This study aimed to investigate how cues of being watched influence decision-making, attention allocation, and risk tendencies. Using decision scenarios adopted from the “Asian Disease Problem,” we examined participants’ risk tendency in a financial scenario when they were watched. A total of 63 older and 66 younger adults participated. Eye tracking was used to reveal the decision-maker’s attention allocation (fixations and dwell time per word). The results found that both younger and older adults tend to seek risk in the loss frame than in the gain frame (i.e., framing effect). Watching eyes tended to escalate reckless gambling behaviors among older adults, which led them to maintain their share in the depressed fund market, regardless of whether the options were gain or loss framed. The eye-tracking results revealed that older adults gave less attention to the sure option in the eye condition (i.e., fewer fixations and shorter dwell time). However, their attention was maintained on the gamble options. In comparison, images of “watching eyes” did not influence the risk seeking of younger adults but decreased their framing effect. Being watched can affect financial risk preference in decision-making. The exploration of the contextual sensitivity of being watched provides us with insight into developing decision aids to promote rational financial decision-making, such as human-robot interactions. Future research on age differences still requires further replication.
... In particular, as put forth in CISDA, decisions about deception involve reasoning about the intentions of others, requiring theory of mind in one-to-one social interactions (Beadle et al., 2012). Extending this model to social communication via news, analytical reasoning is required when assessing others' true intentions through news media communication (Bronstein et al., 2019; and may buffer the impact of age-related decline in other cognitive functions on deception detection (e.g., sensitivity to cues of untrustworthiness; Castle et al., 2012;Frazier et al., 2021). Under CISDA, affect refers to the interpretation of stimuli and contexts to align with one's affective state and motivational goals; with evidence supporting that aging is associated with prioritization of emotional goals (Carstensen & DeLiema, 2018;Pehlivanoglu & Verhaeghen, 2019). ...
This paper adopted an adult lifespan developmental approach by asking 87 young (25-39 years), 59 middle-aged (44-59 years), and 47 older (60-78 years) women and men to rate the trustworthiness of faces that systematically varied in age (young, middle-aged, older) and emotion (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry, disgusted) from the FACES Lifespan Database.
First impressions based on facial cues have the potential to influence how older adults (OAs), a vulnerable population, are treated by others. The present study used a data‐driven approach to examine dimensions underlying first impressions of OAs and whether those dimensions vary by perceiver age. In Experiment 1, young adult (YA) and OA participants provided unconstrained, written descriptions in response to OA faces. From these descriptors, 18 trait categories were identified that were similar, but not identical, across age groups. In Experiment 2, YA and OA participants rated OA faces on the trait words identified for their age group in Experiment 1. In separate principal components analyses, dimensions of sternness and confidence emerged for both groups. In Experiment 3, YA and OA participants rated these same faces on new words encompassing traits, emotion cues, and other appearance cues. Correlations between these ratings and factor scores showed that sternness is analogous to approachability for both age groups. Confidence is analogous to competence for both age groups and related to perceived age/health/attractiveness. Confidence was related to shyness for YAs but dominance for OAs. The current research has implications for a lifespan perspective on first impressions and informs functional accounts.
Social relationships change across the lifespan as social networks narrow and motivational priorities shift to the present. Interestingly, aging is also associated with changes in executive function, including decision-making abilities, but it remains unclear how age-related changes in both domains interact to impact financial decisions involving other people. To study this problem, we recruited 50 human participants (Nyounger = 26, ages 18-34; Nolder = 24, ages 63-80) to play an economic trust game as the investor with three partners (friend, stranger, and computer) who played the role of investee. Investors underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the trust game while investees were seated outside of the scanner. Building on our previous work with younger adults showing both enhanced striatal responses and altered default-mode network (DMN) connectivity as a function of social closeness during reciprocated trust, we predicted that these relations would exhibit age-related differences. We found that striatal responses to reciprocated trust from friends relative to strangers and computers were blunted in older adults relative to younger adults, thus supporting our primary pre-registered hypothesis regarding social closeness. We also found that older adults exhibited enhanced DMN connectivity with the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) during reciprocated trust from friends compared to computers while younger adults exhibited the opposite pattern. Taken together, these results advance our understanding of age-related differences in sensitivity to social closeness in the context of trusting others.
Accurate decisions about whether to trust someone are critical for adaptive social behavior. Previous research into trustworthiness decisions about face stimuli have focused on individuals. Here, decisions about groups of people are made cumulatively on the basis of sequences of faces. Participants chose to either increase or withdraw an initial investment in mock companies based on how trustworthy the company representatives (face stimuli) appeared. Companies were formed using participant trust ratings from the previous week, to create strong trustworthy, weak trustworthy, weak untrustworthy, and strong untrustworthy companies. Participants made faster, more accurate decisions for companies carrying stronger evidence (e.g., faces rated more extremely). Companies with more extreme ratings yielded faster decisions for untrustworthy than trustworthy companies, consistent with a negativity bias. Electrophysiological data revealed that amplitude of the P1 and P3 ERP components, linked to attentional processes, were largest for strong trustworthy faces. This suggests that evidence counter to bias draws special attention. In addition, the first face representing each company provoked larger amplitude P1, P3, and LPP than subsequent faces. This result suggests that when making social decisions about groups of people, the first person one meets receives the most attention.
In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The development of an adequate assessment instrument is a necessary prerequisite for social psychological research on loneliness. Two studies provide methodological refinement in the measurement of loneliness. Study 1 presents a revised version of the self-report UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Loneliness Scale, designed to counter the possible effects of response bias in the original scale, and reports concurrent validity evidence for the revised measure. Study 2 demonstrates that although loneliness is correlated with measures of negative affect, social risk taking, and affiliative tendencies, it is nonetheless a distinct psychological experience.
In the present research, we examined the effects of age, cohort, and time of measurement on well-being across adulthood. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of two independent samples-one with more than 10,000 repeated assessments across 30 years (mean assessments per participant = 4.44, SD = 3.47) and one with nationally representative data-suggested that well-being declines with age. This decline, however, reversed when we controlled for birth cohort. That is, once we accounted for the fact that older cohorts had lower levels of well-being, all cohorts increased in well-being with age relative to their own baseline. Participants tested more recently had higher well-being, but time of measurement, unlike cohort, did not change the shape of the trajectory. Although well-being increased with age for everyone, cohorts that lived through the economic challenges of the early 20th century had lower well-being than those born during more prosperous times.
Previous studies have shown that trustworthiness judgments from facial appearance approximate general valence evaluation of faces (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008) and are made after as little as 100 ms exposure to novel faces (Willis & Todorov, 2006). In Experiment 1, using better masking pro-cedures and shorter exposures, we replicate the latter findings. In Experi-ment 2, we systematically manipulate the exposure to faces and show that a sigmoid function almost perfectly describes how judgments change as a function of time exposure. The agreement of these judgments with time-unconstrained judgments is above chance after 33 ms, improves with ad-ditional exposure, and does not improve with exposures longer than 167 ms. In Experiment 3, using a priming paradigm, we show that effects of face trustworthiness are detectable even when the faces are presented below the threshold of objective awareness as measured by a forced choice rec-ognition test of the primes. The findings suggest that people automatically make valence/trustworthiness judgments from facial appearance. Person impressions are often formed rapidly and spontaneously from minimal information (Todorov & Uleman, 2003; Uleman, Blader, & Todorov, 2005). One rich source of such information is facial appearance and there is abundant research about the effects of facial appearance on social outcomes (e.g., Blair, Judd, & Chap-leau, 2004; Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006; Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994; Hassin & Trope, 2000; Langlois et al., 2000; Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1998; Zebrowitz, 1999). For example, inferences of competence, based solely on fa-cial appearance, predict the outcomes of the U.S. congressional (Todorov, Mandi-sodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005) and gubernatorial elections (Ballew & Todorov, 2007; Hall, Goren, Chaiken, & Todorov, 2009), and inferences of dominance predict mili-tary rank attainment (Mazur, Mazur, & Keating, 1984; Mueller & Mazur, 1996).
Myers and Diener (1995) asked “Who is happy?” but examined the question of who is more and who is less happy In fact, most people report a positive level of subjective well-being (SWB), and say that they are satisfied with domains such as marriage, work, and leisure People in disadvantaged groups on average report positive well-being, and measurement methods in addition to self-report indicate that most people's affect is primarily pleasant Cross-national data suggest that there is a positive level of SWB throughout the world, with the possible exception of very poor societies In 86% of the 43 nations for which nationally representative samples are available the mean SWB response was above neutral Several hypotheses to explain the positive levels of SWB are discussed
Decision making often occurs in the face of uncertainty about whether one's choices will lead to benefit or harm. The somatic-marker hypothesis is a neurobiological theory of how decisions are made in the face of uncertain outcome. This theory holds that such decisions are aided by emotions, in the form of bodily states, that are elicited during the deliberation of future consequences and that mark different options for behavior as being advantageous or disadvantageous. This process involves an interplay between neural systems that elicit emotional/bodily states and neural systems that map these emotional/bodily states.
The typical functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) study presents a formidable problem of multiple statistical comparisons (i.e, > 10,000 in a 128 x 128 image). To protect against false positives, investigators have typically relied on decreasing the per pixel false positive probability. This approach incurs an inevitable loss of power to detect statistically significant activity. An alternative approach, which relies on the assumption that areas of true neural activity will tend to stimulate signal changes over contiguous pixels, is presented. If one knows the probability distribution of such cluster sizes as a function of per pixel false positive probability, one can use cluster-size thresholds independently to reject false positives. Both Monte Carlo simulations and fMRI studies of human subjects have been used to verify that this approach can improve statistical power by as much as fivefold over techniques that rely solely on adjusting per pixel false positive probabilities.
Based on Jones and Nisbett's (1972) proposition that actor-observer differences in causal attributions derive from differences in attentional focus, it was hypothesized that observers' focus of attention would influence their causal attributions for an actor's behavior. More specifically, it was predicted that the behavior of an actor who was the focus of attention by virtue of some salient physical attribute would be attributed by observers more to dispositional causes and less to situational causes than would the behavior of a less physically salient actor. The manipulations of physical salience were based upon Gestalt laws of figural emphasis in object perception. They included brightness (Study I), motion (Study II), pattern complexity (Study III), and contextual novelty (Studies IV and V). The results revealed that the salinece of the actors' environments (i.e., the other people present) rather than the salience of the actor him/herself had the most consistent influence on causal attributions. When environmental salience was high, behavior was attributed relatively more situationally than when it was low. Prior research findings are considered in light of the proposition that causal attributions for an actor's behavior vary only with the salience of his/her environment, and additional implications of this phenomenon are suggested. Some ambiguities in the application of Gestalt principles to the perception of people are discussed.