Choice-supportive source monitoring: Do our decisions seem better to us aswe age?

Participants were given several 2-option choices and then asked to review h ow they felt about their decisions, to review the details of their decision s, or to do an unrelated task. When later asked to attribute features to th e previous options, in each condition older adults (64-83 years) attributed significantly more positive and fewer negative features to their chosen op tions than to foregone options. Younger adults' (18-22 years) attributions were as choice-supportive as those of older adults in the affective review condition but were less so in the other conditions. The age difference was present even when older and younger adults were equated for source identifi cation and recognition accuracy. This study suggests that as people age, th eir tendency to distort memory in favor of the options they chose increases . In addition, it suggests that affectively reviewing choices increases you nger adults' tendency toward choice-supportive memory.