Older people take bad news in stride: study
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Older people are able to take bad news more in stride than their children or grandchildren, which can make them more risky gamblers as losses don’t scare them, according to a U.S. study.
Research funded by the National Institute of Aging has found evidence that older adults process negative information differently from their younger counterparts and are less responsive to unpleasant information.
In a study led by Dr. Stacey Wood, neuropsychologist and associate professor at California’s Scripps College, a group of older and younger adults were shown a series of negative images, such as dead animals, and positive images, like bowls of ice-cream, and the change in brain activity was recorded.
“As a group, older adults are less likely to be depressed and less affected by negative or unpleasant information,” Wood told Reuters.
Wood, and her collaborator in the study, Dr. Michael Kisley from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, also looked at the effects of gambling losses on younger and older adults.
They found older adults were less likely to pay attention to negative results. “Younger adults learn very early to stay clear of the decks with high losses,” said Wood.
“Older adults are able to tolerate the losses and are more willing to risk future draws in hopes of a high payout. Indeed, older adults tend to do as well as younger adults by the end of the game.”
But Wood said the fact that older people did not react as much to negative images as younger people, did not necessarily make them any happier.
“It’s not necessarily that older adults are becoming happier, but younger adults are very attentive to negative information,” she said.
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