Growing evidence, however, reveals that older adults could be less influenced by the consequences of their behavior than younger ones and suggests that reward has greater appeal to younger adults than to older adults. Related literature supported the view that older adults were less susceptible to motivation, such as financial gain, and that simple payoffs failed to elicit response from them (Sanford 1978 as qtd in Tripp). While young adults would be influenced by financial or social rewards, older people would prefer the acquisition of skill or learning.
The study was based on the responses of 31 younger adults and 31 older adults (Tripp 1999). The findings indicated that the reduced interest in reward was a direct consequence of the aging process (McCarthy 1991 as qtd in Tripp), and age-related changes in dopaminergic function could explain it. The neurotransmitter dopamine is believed to critically affect incentive learning and reinforce behavior. There was also some evidence that dopaminergic function decreased with age and the reduced sensitiveness to reward could directly result. Rewards and other incentives have always been believed to alter or influence performance. If sensitiveness to the frequency of reward decreases with increasing age, age-related performance could occur (Tripp).
According to this research, younger people were more drawn by external rewards than senior people (Tripp 1999). If behavioral change is the goal, it suggested longer and more frequent rewards could be necessary. This difference in susceptibility to rewards could also indicate susceptibility to punishment, meaning that young adults could be more responsive to discouragement through punishment than older adults.
The aspect of moral reasoning tasks could be one more significant difference between young adults and seniors. Piaget theorized that the individual had attained the peak of moral development around 15 years old and assumed that that peak would remain stable throughout life (McDonald 1996). The assumption derived from the premise that older children and adolescents would perform Piaget's moral tasks correctly and that older people would do the same. But other studies have shown that older adults performed less in tasks like conservation, classification and seriation, and animism as they did in traditional tests of childhood reasoning. Findings of these studies suggested that such tasks proved unsuitable to older adults because the tasks looked too simple to them.
A test conducted to evaluate earlier findings used the responses of 110 subjects, including 44 teenagers with a mean age of 14.7 and 29 senior individuals with a mean age of 71.1 from the Midlands of England (McDonald 1996). They were asked to read a pamphlet, containing Piaget's 35 stories on moral reasoning, which came from his collection entitled "The Moral Judgment of the Child." The stories were categorized into lying, collective responsibility, stealing, punishment, immanent justice, equality and authority and justice between children. Those stories on carelessness, lying and stealing stressed on the motives and the outcomes of such acts; those on equality, authority and justice between children centered on attitudes toward authority; the stories on punishment delved into the types suitable for certain misdeeds; those on collective responsibility dealt with ethical choice of the group or the individual; and those on immanent justice were about the connection between a misfortune and wrong behavior. Responses were classified and represented a high or low level of moral reasoning as Piaget's assessment standard for children (McDonald).
Major findings illustrated that teen-agers had a lower moral reasoning level than the elderly and that moral reasoning did not tend to decline with increasing age (McDonald 1996). They deviated from what Piaget's informal method and theory, which predicted that people attaining a certain developmental level would never look back. They rejected Piaget's belief that aging people would always change the moral views held when younger and incapable or disinclined to change them in old age (McDonald). In everyday actual life, these findings may not be experienced by the objective observer, though.
Young adults and senior individuals seem to differ also in their time perspective. American culture is powerfully future-directed and optimistic and the young embody its ideals. Aging people, in general, tend to ruminate and look back at the pas (Fingerman 1995)t. Constant or frequent recollection of the past is not viewed as something static but as a shift that aging individuals take. They are inclined to be nostalgic. On the other hand, young adults vigorously dream of the future...
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