LAUSR

Significance Older adults are frequently targets of financial fraud. Therefore, understanding how cognitive changes across adulthood impact social decisions with economic stakes is critical. We investigated, in adults aged 18 to 92, how memory for previous interactions influences social decisions and how those decisions differ from analogous, nonsocial choices. While their memory deficits led to poorer decisions in both domains, older adults had biases that made their social decisions especially maladaptive: they tended to remember that others were generous, they interacted with familiar others regardless of what they remembered about them, and they chose partners who appeared generous, even when they were not. Thus, older adults may make financially costly social decisions when those decisions depend on recalling specific past experiences.