Dating apps are increasingly used across the adult lifespan, yet little is known about age-related differences in dating app motivations and the links to psychological well-being. In this cross-sectional study, 301 dating app users (18-86 years; M = 52.4, SD = 16.5) self-reported five motivations (social approval, relationship seeking, sexual experience, socializing, and entertainment), as well as life satisfaction, loneliness, and depressive and anxiety symptoms. Older age among dating app users was associated with lesser sexual experience, relationship seeking, and social approval motivations but higher socializing motivation, with no age differences in entertainment motivation. Greater social approval motivation predicted higher levels of loneliness among older adults but not young adults. This suggests that, among older dating app users, greater loneliness may increase the desire to gain social approval, and/or seeking social approval in older age may increase loneliness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Little is known about the degree to which older adults rely on advice in their everyday decision-making, as well as predictors and outcomes of their advice-taking. The present study aimed to examine whether social closeness and momentary affect predict advice-taking across the adult lifespan using an experience sampling method in everyday life. Decision satisfaction with or without advice-taking was also examined. Participants (N = 117) were predominately Western, European aged 21-76 years. They reported on their advice-taking 3 times a day for 10 days. Data collected over 2023-2024 revealed that degree of social closeness did not influence the association between age and advice-taking. However, when affect was more positive, older age was associated with greater advice-taking. These findings suggest that affective state but not relationship goals and closeness to an advisor predict greater advice-taking with older age. In addition, greater advice-taking and more positive affect are associated with greater decision satisfaction, regardless of age. Overall, the current findings indicate that in their everyday decision-making, older adults are more likely to take advice when they are in a positive mood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Initial empirical evidence and theories suggest that decision-making may become more avoidant with age. However, recent studies provide inconsistent evidence for this effect. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 studies (N = 7969) to assess evidence for an association between age and avoidant decision-making style. We included studies that used the avoidant subscale of the General-Decision-Making Style (GDMS) questionnaire or the buck-passing subscale of the Melbourne Decision-Making Questionnaire (complete avoidance), or the dependent subscale of the GDMS (partial avoidance). We also assessed potential moderators of the effect, including age range for each sample, gender, culture, participant sample type, publication year, decision style subscale, and degree of avoidance (complete vs. partial). Surprisingly, the data revealed a small association between older age and less avoidant decision-making style. Moderator analysis revealed that this association applied to complete decision avoidance (the avoidant and buck-passing subscales) and not partial avoidance (the dependent subscale). Additionally, moderation by sample type suggests that decision style does not become less avoidant until after middle age. We discuss important future directions for research aimed at investigating nuances that may contribute toward avoidant decision-making style in older age.

Trust is a complex psychological phenomenon that is foundational to coordinated behaviour and societal function. This narrative review critically examines the perceptual, social, and cognitive indicators of trust, drawing on findings from multiple fields of behavioural science to identify theoretical and empirical gaps in our current understanding. Particular attention is paid to social identity cues, perceptual features like eye gaze, pupil dilation, and facial characteristics, and memory recall factors related to threat and reliability judgements, to highlight the potential domains of functional overlap that are ignored by narrowly focused research approaches. The review also identifies critical gaps in understanding the interplay of multimodal sensory cues, the impact of trust violations on memory encoding and retrieval, and the integration of trust cues in ecologically valid settings. To ground the importance of the dynamics of trust formation, the paper then overviews some demonstrable effects trust has on other domains of decision-making, ranging from financial to legal. Recommendations for future research emphasise the need for interdisciplinary approaches to account for these complexities. Pursuing these empirical directions could lead to significant practical advances in the understanding of the cognitive mechanisms underpinning trust, and their application to real-world decision-making settings where trust is essential.

Older adults prioritize emotion regulation over other cognitively demanding tasks. Thus, emotions requiring regulation may increase reliance on advice when making judgements. An online sample of 42 young, 48 middle-aged, and 42 older adults were randomly allocated to either an anger, gratitude, or neutral emotion induction, using autobiographical recall. A judge-advisor task measured advice-taking, and participants rated their confidence, perceived advice accuracy, and emotions, followed by the general decision-making styles questionnaire. Due to emotion induction failure, a global positive mood score was explored. Although positive mood did not correlate with advice-taking, greater age was associated with lesser avoidant decision-making style, lower pre- and post-advice confidence, and greater positive mood. Perceived advice accuracy was positively correlated with both pre- and post-advice confidence ratings, positive mood, and advice-taking. The present study provides no evidence for age-related differences in the degree of advice-taking, but suggests that different mechanisms likely underpin advice-taking at different ages.

From understanding others' mental states to interpreting social cues, aging impairs social abilities. These impairments might not seem surprising given they rely on other cognitive functions such as memory, attention and decision-making, which are known to decline with age. It is, however, unclear to what degree impairments of more basic perceptual abilities, such as eye-gaze detection, contribute to or even precede the decline in social skills. Previous studies have obtained mixed results when investigating whether aging impairs fundamental perceptual processing of social information. Our study expands on previous findings by showing that aging impairs the ability to rapidly detect and discriminate gaze direction. Using breaking Continuous Flash Suppression (b-CFS), we tested whether preconscious automatic processing of direct eye contact was prioritized over the processing of averted gaze direction, as previously established in younger adults. Our results show that, on average, older adults (65-89 years old, n = 19) lack this direct gaze advantage and do not exhibit significant differences in detecting direct vs. averted gaze direction. These results provide important insights into age-related deficits in social cognition, suggesting social processing deficits may manifest at the earliest automatic stages of perceptual processing. Future work examining the relationship between alterations in gaze processing and decline in higher-level cognitive functions could inform the development of early detection tools and clinical interventions.

This study examined whether advice-taking differs when making subjective face trustworthiness estimates relative to objective face age estimates. Participants (N = 177) completed a judge-advisor system task to measure how much weight they would give to advice regarding the age of a face (i.e., an objective estimate with a single correct answer) versus the trustworthiness of a face (i.e., a subjective estimate without a correct answer). Measures of fluid intelligence and working memory assessed cognitive resources, and participants provided ratings of perceived difficulty and confidence for each type of estimate. The difference between initial estimates and advice provided a measure of actual difficulty for each type of estimate. We found that advice-taking was greater when estimating face age than face trustworthiness. In addition, perceived difficulty, confidence, and actual difficulty were greater for face trustworthiness than age estimates. However, greater advice-taking was associated with greater actual difficulty for face age estimates, and less actual difficulty for face trustworthiness estimates. While previous research suggests that advice-taking increases with task difficulty, the current data reveal that this may depend on type of estimate. Subjective trustworthiness estimates that were more difficult to estimate than objective age estimates were associated with less advice-taking, and this may be at least partly attributable to differing motivations underlying objective (age) vs. subjective (trustworthiness) estimations.

There is minimal research investigating the influence of advice on decision-making in older age. The present study investigated the effect of different types of bad advice, relative to no advice, on young and older adults' decision-making in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Fifty-four older adults and 59 young adults completed the IGT after receiving no advice, or advice to select from disadvantageous deck A (small, high-frequency losses), or disadvantageous deck B (larger, low-frequency losses). Corrugator EMG, memory and fluid intelligence were assessed. Averaged across advice conditions, older adults made more disadvantageous selections than young adults. There were no age-related differences in responding to bad advice, nor in corrugator activity in response to losses (i.e. frowning), or in learning to avoid deck A faster than deck B. Selecting from deck B was associated with reduced education among older adults, and reduced fluid intelligence among young adults. The data suggest that older adults make more disadvantageous decisions than young adults, and this is not exacerbated by bad advice. Both young and older adults are slower at learning to avoid choices resulting in low frequency relative to high-frequency losses, and this may be associated with individual differences in cognitive processing.

OBJECTIVES:The present study sought to investigate the influence of advice on decision making in older age, as well as the potential influence of depressive symptoms and age-related differences in the cognitively demanding emotion regulation on advice-taking. METHOD:A nonclinical sample (N = 156; 50% female; 47 young: M age = 29.87, standard deviation [SD] = 5.58; 54 middle-aged: M age = 50.91, SD = 7.13; 55 older: M age = 72.51, SD = 5.33) completed a judge-advisor task to measure degree of advice-taking, as well as measures of fluid intelligence, depressive symptoms, confidence, perceived advice accuracy, and emotion regulation. RESULTS:Age did not influence degree of advice-taking. Greater depressive symptoms were associated with more reliance on advice, but only among individuals who identified as emotion regulators. Interestingly, older age was associated with perceiving advice to be less accurate. DISCUSSION:The study contributes to the sparse literature on advice-taking in older age. Cognitive and emotional factors influence the degree to which advice is incorporated into decision making in consistent ways across the adult lifespan. A key difference is that older adults take as much advice as younger adults despite perceiving the advice to be less accurate.

Objective: This study examined whether age would moderate the association between a brief message frame intervention and COVID-19 vaccine willingness. Methods: Data were collected in Australia between 25 June and 5 July 2021. Participants ( N = 187) aged 18–85 years had not yet received a dose of COVID-19 vaccine. After random assignment to a gain- or loss-framed message, participants reported COVID-19 vaccine willingness, general anti-vaccine attitudes, approach and avoidance motivation, and COVID-19 illness risk perception. Results: Message frame did not influence COVID-19 vaccine willingness. However, greater COVID-19 illness risk perception and older age increased the odds of Pfizer vaccine willingness, while lower avoidance motivation increased the odds of AstraZeneca vaccine willingness. Greater anti-vaccine ideology decreased the odds of willingness to receive either of the COVID-19 vaccines. Conclusions: A brief message frame intervention did not influence COVID-19 vaccine willingness across the adult lifespan.

Seeking advice from others may improve decision-making, particularly in older adults when cognitive decline can impair decision-making. This study measured the extent to which older adults rated the value of advice and used that advice in their decisions. Young (aged 18-37 years; n = 57) and older (aged 62- 84 years; n = 56) adults completed a judge-advisor task incorporating advice from an expert and a novice. To capture interindividual differences in ratings of advice value and advice use (i.e., weight of advice), desire for autonomy, working memory, and fluid intelligence were assessed. Relative to young adults, older adults rated novice advice as being more valuable and were more likely to adjust their estimates based on expert and especially novice advice. Among older adults, poorer working memory and reduced preference for autonomous decision-making were associated with greater ratings of the value of novice advice, while better fluid intelligence was associated with increased ratings of the value of expert advice. Overall, older adults give more weight to advice and cognitive decline appears to compromise discrimination of the quality of that advice.

Objectives Global suicide rates are highest among older adults, and especially older men, yet proximal predictors of suicidal ideation in older age remain poorly understood. This study tested the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide in older men and women by investigating whether perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness and/or their interaction are proximal predictors of suicidal ideation before versus during the global COVID-19 pandemic.Methods The sample (N = 208) included healthy community-dwelling older Australian persons surveyed face-to-face pre-pandemic (n = 102), or online peri-pandemic (n = 106). Depression, social interaction, social satisfaction, thwarted belongingness, and perceived burdensomeness were assessed as predictors of suicidal ideation.Results Perceived burdensomeness was a more proximal predictor of suicidal ideation among older adults than depression or thwarted belongingness. Suicidal ideation and perceived burdensomeness were higher in men than women, but sex did not moderate the influence of perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness or social satisfaction on suicidal desire. The interaction between perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness predicted more additional variance in suicidal ideation in the older persons surveyed during the COVID-19 pandemic relative to those surveyed before the pandemic.Conclusion Suicidal ideation among older persons peri-pandemic is discussed, and recommendations are made for age-specific suicide prevention strategies.

This study investigated the psychometric properties of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) in younger adults. Participants were 212 younger adults age M = 22 (range = 17–53) years. They completed a demographic information questionnaire and self-report measures: the GAI, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder–7 (GAD-7), the Patient Health Questionnaire–9 (PHQ-9), the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), and the Worry Behaviors Inventory (WBI). Data from the GAI were collected at two time points, one week apart, and data from other self-report measures were collected once via Qualtrics, an online survey platform. The internal consistency and test–retest score reliability of the GAI were excellent. It had good congruent validity with other anxiety measures, limited divergent validity with depression measures, and sound convergent validity with worry measures. The GAI showed good discrimination between probable cases and noncases of generalized anxiety disorder (participants who scored ⩾8 on the GAD-7) and its optimal cutoff score for probable cases of GAD was ⩾12. A unidimensional component structure of the GAI best fit this study’s data. This study has provided preliminary evidence that the GAI is reliable and valid for use in an Australian sample of younger adults.

The degree to which people take advice, and the factors that influence advice-taking, are of broad interest to laypersons, professionals, and policy-makers. This meta-analysis on 346 effect sizes from 129 independent datasets ( N = 17, 296) assessed the weight of advice in the judge-advisor system paradigm, as well as the influence of sample and task characteristics. Information about the advisor(s) that is suggestive of advice quality was the only unique predictor of the overall pooled weight of advice. Individuals adjusted estimates by 32%, 37%, and 48% in response to advisors described in ways that suggest low, neutral, or high quality advice, respectively. This indicates that the benefits of compromise and averaging may be lost if accurate advice is perceived to be low quality, or too much weight is given to inaccurate advice that is perceived to be high quality. When examining the three levels of perceived quality separately, advice-taking was greater for subjective and uncertain estimates, relative to objective estimates, when information about the advisor was neutral in terms of advice quality. Sample characteristics had no effect on advice-taking, thus providing no evidence that age, gender, or individualism influence the weight of advice. The findings contribute to current theoretical debates and provide direction for future research.

This article discusses psychological and clinical studies of depression as comorbid to different dementias and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). First, we summarize studies on the diagnosis and prevalence of depression in dementia patients; we will show that there are different ways of diagnosing depression in dementia, leading to some conflicting findings. Second, we discuss how depression can be a risk factor for the development of MCI and dementias, possibly due to depression impacting hippocampal function. Then, we discuss the nature and subtypes of depression in dementia as well as the relationship between the type (Alzheimer's disease vs vascular dementia) and severity of dementia (e.g., mild vs advanced stage) and depression. Throughout the article, we will summarize relevant clinical and neural studies on depression in dementia, including the importance of diagnosing and treating depression in dementia patients. Our review shows the relationship between depression and dementia is bidirectional, there are different subtypes of depression, patients' insight of their disease can exacerbate depression symptoms, and the severity of depression varies across dementia types. Importantly, this article provides a timely update on a prior review on the links between depression and dementia.

Objectives: A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to quantify the degree to which subjective age is associated with cognition, subjective well-being, and depression. Method: A systematic search was performed in three electronic social scientific databases, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science in May 2018. A manual forward and backward citation search of articles meeting the criteria for inclusion, including a mean participant age of 40+ years, was conducted in November 2019. Twenty-four independent data sets were included in the meta-analysis. Results: Overall, a younger subjective age was related to enhanced subjective well-being and cognitive performance, and reduced depressive symptoms (r = .18). This association was stronger among collectivist (r = .24) than individualist (r = .16) cultures. Mean chronological age across samples (ranging from 55 to 83 years), type of subjective age scoring, and gender did not influence the strength of the overall association. Further analysis revealed that subjective age was individually associated with depressive symptoms (r = .20), subjective well-being (r = .17), and cognition (r = .14), and none had a stronger association with subjective age than the other. Discussion: The results indicate a small yet significant association between subjective age and important developmental outcomes.

Prosociality refers to a broad set of behavioral, motivational, cognitive, affective, and social processes that contribute to, and/or are focused on, the welfare of others. This overview summarizes 10 articles included in the special issue on this topic. In discussing this research relative to existing theories, we situate this work within Penner et al.'s (Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 2005, 365-392) multilevel framework that recognizes distinct yet integrated levels of analysis to characterize micro- (i.e., intraindividual), meso- (i.e., interpersonal), and macro- (i.e., sociocultural and organizational contexts) level effects. While there is some evidence for lifespan continuity in prosocial dispositions at the micro level, the influences of long-term learning and socialization processes at the meso and macro levels are likely to be maximized in older age. Aside from formal voluteering, the adult lifespan development of prosociality has only recently received attention, especially with respect to influences beyond the micro level. This special issue encompasses research examining developmental change and stability in prosociality that collectively cuts across levels of analysis to inform theories in both adult development and aging and prosociality more generally. We propose future directions that take an integrative approach to understanding the development of prosociality by considering interactions among micro, meso, and macro levels. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, older adults face high rates of social isolation compared to other age groups. This is due to the strict physical distancing rules applied to older adults as a result of their vulnerability to coronavirus. Social isolation is known to have negative impacts on the mental health of older adults as a result of loneliness. This includes increased risk of depression and suicidal ideation. This review explores the possible exacerbation of mental health issues among older adults due to social isolation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also present data demonstrating no difference in distress, and reduced loneliness, among older (N = 99, M age = 73.4 years; 56 female) relative to young (N = 101, M age = 20.6 years; 51 female) Australians during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a globally aging population, resources are required to promote social engagement among older adults who may otherwise lead isolated lives. This review article highlights a need for studies examining the validity of online communication tools for ameliorating the ill effects of physical distancing among older adults.