Table 1.

Participant Characteristics and their Association with Age and Choice Preferences in Study 1

	Young (n = 30)	Old (n = 30)	dyoung-old	pyoung-old	ρdrd-sens	CIdrd-sens
Demographics
Age	28.93 (4.75)	64.97 (8.45)	5.26	p < .001	.05	−.21, .30
Gender (% female)	50%	50%		p = 1	−.01	−.26, .24
Education	5.70 (1.49)	5.90 (2.05)	0.11	p = .67	.15	−.11, .39
Thresholds (in Volts)
Minimum threshold	3.73 (1.96)	4.90 (3.35)	0.43	p < .11	−.04	−.29, .22
Maximum threshold	32.23 (18.14)	46.07 (20.52)	0.71	p < .01	.13	−.13, .37
Negative Baseline Affect	2.53 (1.61)	2.10 (1.58)	0.27	p = .30	−.24†	−.47, .01
Personality traits
BFI 10 - Neuroticism	5.77 (1.99)	4.30 (1.44)	0.85	p < .01	.04	−.22, .29
BFI 10 – Extraversion	6.70 (1.68)	6.53 (1.91)	0.09	p = .72	−.08	−.33, .18
BFI 10 – Openness	7.90 (1.56)	7.77 (1.28)	0.09	p = .72	.10	−.16, .35
BFI 10 – Agreeableness	6.57 (1.77)	7.23 (1.48)	0.40	p = .12	.02	−.24, .27
BFI 10 – Conscient.	7.73 (1.36)	8.20 (1.24)	0.36	p = .17	.32*	.07, .53
Future Time Perspective	54.73 (9.99)	45.23 (11.39)	0.89	p < .001	.17	−.09, .41
Subjective Health
Mental	44.55 (10.53)	53.03 (8.62)	0.88	p < .001	.04	−.22, .29
Physical	55.52 (5.45)	51.70 (7.77)	0.57	p < .05	−.14	−.38, .12
Fluid cognition
Digit symbol	67.17 (10.45)	51.40 (9.62)	1.57	p < .001	−.16	−.40, .10
N-back (% correct)	91.67 (5.46)	84.33 (8.68)	1.01	p < .001	−.22†	−.45, .04

Notes:

For continuous measures, standard deviations are shown in parentheses.

For education: 1 = less than high-school education, 8 = graduate degree.

Higher scores on cognitive measures indicate better functioning.

d_young-old= Cohen’s d for comparisons between younger and older adults

p_young-old= p-values for comparisons between younger and older adults (based on χ² for gender and on t-test for all other variables).

ρ_drd-sens= Spearman’s correlation with number of dread-sensitive choices

CI_drd-sens= 95% confidence interval for ρ_drd-sens

^*p < .05,

^†p < .10