Older people always get made fun of for different reasons whether it be their hearing, their infatuation with the past, or their driving. It is no secret that as you get older you lose certain abilities that you had when you were younger. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) released a study that found 80 percent of people who are involved in financial scams are above the age of 65. Why is this the case? A psychologist named Shelley Taylor from UCLA conducted a study with 119 older people (55-84) and 34 young people (20-42). She gave each group pictures of faces which were pre-rated for trustworthiness. She found that the older group found people that were determined to have untrustworthy faces as being trustworthy much more frequently than the younger group. The older people's problem was they missed key facial cues like a full smile or direct gaze.
The researchers decided to conduct more tests and this time they got 44 volunteers to undergo a fMRI (functional magnetic brain imaging) while they were showed different faces. The younger people had a lot more activity in the area associated with "gut feelings" known as the anterior singula, while the older people had very little to zero brain activity in this region. There are still more studies that need to be done to determine whether the little to no activity in the brains of older people is a cause or effect of the elderly being more trusting.
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