Sunk-cost fallacy across real and hypothetical decision making in younger and older adults

Research on age-related modifications in decision-making behavior consistently indicates that older adults are more capable than younger adults of abandoning failing commitments when significant but irrecoverable investments have been made (i.e., they are less susceptible to the sunk-cost fallacy). However, previous investigations on this topic that involved older adults employed hypothetical decision-making scenarios that were possibly characterized by age-dependent content. The primary objective of the present study is to explore potential age disparities in the sunk-cost fallacy using real decisions involving tangible rewards, in a context where content-driven influences were potentially minimized. To accomplish this, we employed the effort-based paradigm proposed by (Ronayne et al., in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 186, 318–327, 2021), enriched by two scenario versions that allowed us to manipulate the level of participant engagement. Overall, more than 20% of participants exhibited a behavior that was consistent with the sunk-cost fallacy, but no differences were observed between younger (age ≤ 55) and older (age ≥ 65) adults in any experimental condition. These findings fail to support the hypothesis that older adults exhibit more rational decision-making behavior. Rather, they suggest that previously observed differences in susceptibility to the sunk-cost fallacy may have been influenced by the specific experimental stimuli and paradigms adopted.