Kendra Seaman

Professional Preparation

Ph.D. - Applied Experimental Psychology
Catholic University of America - 2015

MA - Psychology
Catholic University of America - 2010

BA - Psychology
University of Kansas - 2002

BA - Biology
University of Kansas - 2002

Research Areas

Social Influences on Decision Making

Emerging research from my lab and others suggests that older adults may weigh social factors more than younger adults. My colleagues and I developed the Social Motives Questionnaire to distinguish between information-seeking and emotion-regulation motivations (Gong, Seaman, et al., 2019). Consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory, we found that information-seeking motivations decline with age while emotion-regulation motivations increase with age. We thought this age-related difference in social motivation may lead to differences in learning from social feedback. To investigate this, we recently examined how younger and older adults learn to trust over repeated interactions (Seaman et al., 2023). As predicted, we found that older adults displayed less learning that younger adults. However, contrary to our predictions, this was not because of differences in learning differently from positive and negative social feedback. In fact, it may be that older adults are more sensitive to social feedback. In another recent study, we investigated how people respond to dynamic facial expressions, where people see a facial emotional expression evolve (e.g. changing from a neutral expression into a smile). Contrary to research using static images of facial expressions, we found that older individuals had stronger evoked emotional responses to these dynamic stimuli than their younger counterparts (Abiodun et al., 2024). However, despite these stronger emotional responses, this does not necessarily mean that older adults are overly influenced by social feedback. In another recent naturalistic study using experience sampling, we found that older adults were better than younger adults at regulating their spontaneous desires in the presence of others enacting that desire (Castrellon et al., 2024). This emerging research suggests that social influences on decision making across adulthood are nuanced.

Influence of Decision Features

The vast majority of decision making research has focused on examining monetary decisions. However, real-world decision making often requires that individuals weigh the costs and benefits across a variety of domains. Thus, my colleagues designed a set of discounting tasks to test how different types of costs and rewards influence choice behavior. We have found significant age differences in choice behavior depending on the type of cost and the reward domain (Seaman, Gorlick, et al., 2016). These results have been replicated in a recent study during the Covid-19 pandemic (Seaman, Juarez, et al., 2021). In a second study, which focused on decisions about monetary rewards, we discovered that while the tolerance of different costs is behaviorally dissociable, subjective value signals share a common representation in the brain across adulthood (Seaman, Brooks, et al., 2018). More recently, we examined how non-monetary consequences can change the risk-taking preferences of participants (Frank et al., preprint). Collectively, this line of work demonstrates the importance of considering motivation when examining choice behavior across adulthood – and focusing on abstract monetary rewards may limit our ability to quantify age differences in domain-general decision making. Understanding what matters to people is critical to understanding the decisions they make.

Temporal Discounting and Aging

A number of theories in adult development make predictions about the link between age and temporal discounting, or the devaluation of future rewards. However, the empirical literature on this subject was mixed. Thus, with colleagues from Duke and the University of Basel, I conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of temporal discounting across adulthood. Across 37 studies (N = 104, 737), we found no sizeable relationship between adult age and temporal discounting (Seaman et al., 2022). In conducting the review, we observed that studies use a variety of delay durations, ranging from days to years. Working with the founding members of my new lab, we decided to conduct a follow-up study systematically manipulating delay duration. Here, we found that that, at short to moderate time delays, older adults discounted less than younger adults. However, at very long delays (5 and 10 years), older adults discounted at similar rates to younger adults (Leverett et al., 2021). This suggests that observed age differences in temporal discounting may be methodological and that delay length may moderate the relationship between age and discounting.

Risk, Expected Value, and Aging

Emerging research suggests that some age-related deficits in decision making may be linked to the way individuals represent expected value. My work in this area has sought to examine how the probability and variance of outcomes can influence this representation in older adults. For instance, we found individual differences in perceptions of risk are related to residential choice in older adults (Seaman, Stillman, et al 2015). We also observed that older adults have a tendency to accept more positively-skewed financial risks (with a small chance of a large win) than other types of equivalent gambles (Seaman, Leong, et al, 2017) and this age-related positive-skew bias is related to age differences in the recruitment of the lateral prefrontal cortex. Further, a follow-up study showed that the age-related increase in acceptance of positively-skewed bets is not due increased in loss aversion in older adults (Seaman, Green, Shu & Samanez-Larkin, 2018). Taken together, these studies suggest that the processing of probabilistic information can profoundly affect the way individuals, and particularly older adults, make risky decisions (Frank & Seaman, 2023).

Publications

Partial-volume correction increases estimated dopamine D2-like receptor binding potential and reduces adult age differences - Journal Article

Adult age-related differences in susceptibility to social conformity pressures in self-control over daily desires. 2024 - Journal Article

Adult Age Differences in Evoked Emotional Responses to Dynamic Facial Expressions 2024 - Journal Article

Social and Motivational Processing in Middle Age and Older Adults 2024 - Other

The Absence of Positive-Skew Bias for Non-Monetary Realized Risky Decisions 2024 - Other

Boundary conditions for the positive skew bias 2024 - Journal Article

Aging, uncertainty, and decision making—A review 2023 - Journal Article

Age-related differences in the social associative learning of trust information 2023 - Journal Article

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Appointments

Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Dallas [2019–Present]

Postdoctoral Research
Duke University [2017–2019]

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Yale University [2015–2017]

Projects

Psychological Mechanisms of Skewed Decision Making Across Adulthood

2021/09–2024/08 Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
Colleen Frank, UT Dallas
Galston Wong, UT Dallas
Derek Isaacowitz, Washington University in Saint Louis
Each year, 1 out of every 18 older adults is the victim of financial fraud, resulting in estimated losses of $37 billion. These older adults are likely targeted because of this age group’s growing size, affluence, and power. Thus, it is important to understand why older adults sometimes make decisions that are different than younger adults because these age-related differences in decision making have enormous social and economic consequences. Our overall goal is to identify the psychological mechanisms that underlie age differences in risky decision making over the adult life span. This mechanistic focus will generate critical insight about aging and decision making that will guide the development of interventions to improve decision strategies in vulnerable older adults. This project will also seek to increase financial literacy in the general public by developing accessible educational materials appropriate for the adult general public.

Do Age Differences in Associative Learning and Stimulus Generalization Lead to Age Differences in Trust?

• Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
• Lauren Lilly, UT Dallas
• Jessica Cooper, Emory University
• Alex Christensen, UNC-Greensboro
• Brittany Cassidy, UNC-Greensboro

When meeting others, people make quick decisions on whether to trust people or not that affect decision-making and that pose serious consequences for physical, interpersonal, and financial well-being. However, older adults exhibit excessive trust relative to younger adults and this excessive trust leaves older adults particularly such serious consequences, including financial fraud. One explanation for their excessive trust is that older adults may learn to trust differently than do younger adults. The study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine this possibility at both the behavioral and neural levels.

This study is funded by SRNDNA. OSF preregistration includes details about the hypotheses and study design.

Age Differences in Skewed Risky Decision Making in a Visual Performance Task

Colleen Frank, UT Dallas
Galston Wong, UT Dallas
Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
Previous research studies have frequently studied skewed risky decision making in the context of financial outcomes, but less so with alternative rewards/losses. As such, less is known about the extent that skewness in risky decision making reflects domain-specific or domain-general processing. Prior studies have indicated a positivity bias and a preference for positively-skewed gambles, with older adults showing a larger preference for these types of gambles compared to younger adults. The current study will seek to validate these findings in a non-monetary decision outcome, by incorporating real-time decision outcomes that impact a visual performance task

DiverseFACES

Jared Cortez, UT Dallas
Sera Gonzalez, UT Dallas
Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
Psychology and neuroscience research typically lack racial diversity in terms of editing, writing, and participation (Roberts et al., 2020; Abiodun 2019). With some notable exceptions, this lack of diversity in participation also extends into the stimuli used in lab-based studies. Several years ago, Natalie Ebner and her colleagues at The Max Planck Institute for Human Development created a database of facial expression stimuli that included younger, middle-aged, and older adults (FACES). Increasing the age diversity in facial stimuli has greatly facilitated the study of emotion, motivation, and cognition across the adult life span. However, this stimuli set is limited to white men and women. In this project we seek to extend this data set by creating a new diverse FACES data featuring images of canonical emotional expressions from young, middle-aged, and older African American/Black and Hispanic/Latinx individuals.

This study is funded by an internal BBS Pilot Grant to KLS and NIA Diversity supplement to SG.

Emotion Prediction Errors in Social Decisions Across the Lifespan

Colleen Frank, UT Dallas
Kendra Seaman, UT Dallas
The mind is skilled at making predictions. These predictions play a role in many higher order cognitive processes because the difference between predicted and experienced rewards – or reward prediction error – has been shown to drive learning and guide future decisions. However, prediction about future rewards is not the only form of prospection used when making choices. Predictions of future emotional experiences, sometimes known as affective forecasting, also drive decision making. We will investigate the extent to which the relative impact of emotion prediction error and reward prediction error on punitive choice decisions change across adulthood. These findings will give us a better understanding about how people use predictions of their future feelings to make social decisions and how this prospection may change across adulthood.

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Presentations

Transparency and Reproducibility using Open Science

2023/09–2023/09 Center for Vital Longevity's Science Luncheon Series

Motivation and Decision Making in Aging

2018/12–2018/12 Presentation to the National Institute on Aging's Research Centers Collaborative Network (RCCN) Workshop "Achieving and Sustaining Behavior Change to Benefit Older Adults" in December 2018.

News Articles

Peer Pressure Susceptibility Lasts into Adulthood

UTD Profile of research article.

Study May Offer New Clues on Aging, Financial Trustworthiness

Researchers Aim To Make Sense of Risky Financial Behavior in Older Adults

The other essential pandemic office Trump eliminated.

Article in Slate Magazine March 18, 2020.

Dallas County considers cash prizes to persuade people to get vaccinated.

Article in the Dallas Morning News June 11, 2021.

Funding

Psychological Mechanisms of Skewed Decision Making Across Adulthood

$560,915 - National Science Foundation [2021/09–2024/08]

Each year, 1 out of every 18 older adults is the victim of financial fraud, resulting in estimated losses of $37 billion. These older adults are likely targeted because of this age group’s growing size, affluence, and power. Thus, it is important to understand why older adults sometimes make decisions that are different than younger adults because these age-related differences in decision making have enormous social and economic consequences. Our overall goal is to identify the psychological mechanisms that underlie age differences in risky decision making over the adult life span. This mechanistic focus will generate critical insight about aging and decision making that will guide the development of interventions to improve decision strategies in vulnerable older adults. This project will also seek to increase financial literacy in the general public by developing accessible educational materials appropriate for the adult general public.

Research Network on Decision Neuroscience and Aging

$1, 810, 628 - National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging [2022/06–2027/03]

As the proportion of older adults in the population continues to expand, magnifying the relative impact of their decisions, it is increasingly imperative to better understand changes in decision making across the life span before and throughout all stages of significant cognitive impairment related to Alzheimers Disease and related dementias. Increasing interdisciplinary research combining psychology, neuroscience/neurology, medicine, and economics has tremendous potential for increasing translation of science for real-world impact to better understand and alleviate the burden of Alzheimers Disease and related dementias. The long-term goal of this network is to conduct integrative and multidisciplinary research that contributes directly to interventions aimed at improving health and well being in the daily lives of aging adults.