(3/3) Across affect-poor (monetary) and affect-rich (medical) choices, the affect gap emerged similarly for younger and older adults. In addition, older adults were more risk-averse than younger adults, but only for the affect-poor choices, and not for the affect-rich choices.

(2/3) The affect gap is the phenomenon that when choosing between options whose outcomes trigger strong emotions (e.g., in medical choices), people pay less attention to probabilities and focus more on outcomes than in affect-poor choices—resulting in lower decision quality and higher risk aversion.

3/3 Specifically, those who focused less on task-specific trade-offs (duration in TTO, probability in SG) showed larger gaps in their health state valuations. This highlights how attentional focus shapes preferences and suggests that shifting attention could influence health utility assessments.

2/3 We studied *why* time trade-off (TTO) and standard gamble (SG) tasks yield different health state valuations. Using process tracing, we found that differences in how people allocate attention across attributes—health states, durations, and probabilities—drive valuation gaps between TTO and SG.