Age-related Differences in Generalization of Social Learning

Trust is an important social decision that fosters interpersonal cooperation. Prior research suggests that people generalize learned trust to new individuals based on perceptual similarity (FeldmanHall et al., 2018). Building on this, the current study investigated age differences in this generalization. We examined how older versus younger adults trust new individuals differently based on their previous interactions with perceptually similar others. After learning the trustworthiness of three partners (Trustworthy, Neutral, Untrustworthy) through an iterative trust game, younger (N=33) and older (N=30) adults selected new partners to play with in a future trust game. Unbeknownst to the participants, the new partners were created from morphed images between novel faces and the three known faces with varying degrees of similarity (from 23% to 78%). We analyzed the age differences in participants’ choices with respect to this perceptual similarity. A hierarchical logistic regression determined that the trust contrast (the choice difference between playing with trustworthy and untrustworthy morphs) widened less for older than younger adults as perceptual similarity increases (odds ratio = 0.9430, B = -0.06, SE = 0.01, p 0.001), suggesting that older adults’ trust generalization was more muted than younger adults. These findings revealed that older adults do not generalize their learned trust as well as younger adults, especially to the untrustworthy. While this effect may lead them to stereotype less than younger adults, it is also possible that they may be more willing to engage with untrustworthy individuals than younger adults, which may function to facilitate fraud victimization.