Emotion regulation and risk taking: Predicting risky choice in deliberative decision making

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 326-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo Panno ◽  
Marco Lauriola ◽  
Bernd Figner
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hayley R. Brooks ◽  
Peter Sokol-Hessner

Context-dependence is fundamental to risky monetary decision-making. A growing body of evidence suggests that temporal context, or recent events, alters risk-taking at a minimum of three timescales: immediate (e.g. trial-by-trial), neighborhood (e.g. a group of consecutive trials), and global (e.g. task-level). To examine context effects, we created a novel monetary choice set with intentional temporal structure in which option values shifted between multiple levels of value magnitude (“contexts”) several times over the course of the task. This structure allowed us to examine whether effects of each timescale were simultaneously present in risky choice behavior and the potential mechanistic role of arousal, an established correlate of risk-taking, in context-dependency. We found that risk-taking was sensitive to immediate, neighborhood, and global timescales, increasing following small (vs. large) outcome amounts, large positive (but not negative) shifts in context, and when cumulative earnings exceeded expectations. We quantified arousal with skin conductance responses, which were specifically related to the global timescale, increasing with cumulative earnings, suggesting that physiological arousal captures a task-level assessment of performance. We complimented this correlational analysis with a secondary reanalysis of risky monetary choices following the double-blind administration of propranolol and a placebo during a temporally unstructured choice task. We replicated our behavioral finding that risk-taking is context-sensitive at three timescales but found no change in temporal context-effects following propranolol administration. Our results demonstrate that risky decision-making is consistently dynamic at multiple timescales and that arousal is likely the consequence, rather than the cause, of temporal context in risky monetary decision-making.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Éltető Noémi ◽  
Janacsek Karolina ◽  
Kóbor Andrea ◽  
Takács Ádám ◽  
Tóth-Fáber Eszter ◽  
...  

AbstractIn real-life decision-making, sub-optimal risk-taking seems characteristic of adolescents. Such behavior increases the chance of serious negative, and at times, irreversible outcomes for this population (e.g., road traffic accidents, addictions). We are still lacking conclusive evidence, however, for an inverted U-shaped developmental trajectory for risk-taking. This raises the question whether adolescents are really more risk-prone or when facing a novel risky situation, they behave just as children and adults do. To answer this question, we used the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) to assess the risky decision making of 188 individuals ranging in age from 7 to 30. The BART provided useful data for characterizing multiple aspects of risk-taking. Surprisingly, we found that adolescents were not more inclined to take risks than children or young adults. Participants in all age groups were able to adapt their learning processes to the probabilistic environment and improve their performance during the sequential risky choice. There were no age-related differences in risk-taking at any stage of the task. Likewise, neither negative feedback reactivity nor overall task performance distinguished adolescents from the younger and older age groups. Our findings prompt 1) methodological considerations about the validity of the BART and 2) theoretical debate whether the amount of experience on its own may account for age-related changes in real-life risk-taking, since risk-taking in a novel and uncertain situation was invariant across developmental stages.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Russek ◽  
Rani Moran ◽  
Yunzhe Liu ◽  
Raymond J Dolan ◽  
Quentin JM Huys

A ubiquitous feature of human decision making under risk is that individuals differ from each other, as well as from normativity, in how they incorporate reward and probability information. One possible explanation for these deviations is a desire to reduce the number of potential outcomes considered during choice evaluation. Although multiple behavioral models can be invoked involving selective consideration of choice outcomes, whether differences in these tendencies underlie behavioral differences in sensitivity to reward and probability information is unknown. Here we consider neural evidence where we exploit magnetoencephalography (MEG) to decode the actual choice outcomes participants consider when they decide between a gamble and a safe outcome. We show that variability in tendencies of individual participants to reinstate neural outcome representations, based on either their probability or reward, explains variability in the extent to which their choices reflect consideration of probability and reward information. In keeping with this we also show that participants who are higher in behavioral impulsivity fail to preferentially reinstate outcomes with higher probability. Our results suggest that neural differences in the degree to which outcomes are considered shape risk taking strategy, both in decision making tasks, as well as in real life.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla de-Juan-Ripoll ◽  
Irene Alice Chicchi Giglioli ◽  
Jose Llanes-Jurado ◽  
Javier Marín-Morales ◽  
Mariano Alcañiz

Risk taking (RT) is a component of the decision-making process in situations that involve uncertainty and in which the probability of each outcome – rewards and/or negative consequences – is already known. The influence of cognitive and emotional processes in decision making may affect how risky situations are addressed. First, inaccurate assessments of situations may constitute a perceptual bias in decision making, which might influence RT. Second, there seems to be consensus that a proneness bias exists, known as risk proneness, which can be defined as the propensity to be attracted to potentially risky activities. In the present study, we take the approach that risk perception and risk proneness affect RT behaviours. The study hypothesises that locus of control, emotion regulation, and executive control act as perceptual biases in RT, and that personality, sensation seeking, and impulsivity traits act as proneness biases in RT. The results suggest that locus of control, emotion regulation and executive control influence certain domains of RT, while personality influences in all domains except the recreational, and sensation seeking and impulsivity are involved in all domains of RT. The results of the study constitute a foundation upon which to build in this research area and can contribute to the increased understanding of human behaviour in risky situations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 1109-1118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Morawetz ◽  
Peter N C Mohr ◽  
Hauke R Heekeren ◽  
Stefan Bode

Abstract Emotion regulation impacts the expected emotional responses to the outcomes of risky decisions via activation of cognitive control strategies. However, whether the regulation of emotional responses to preceding, incidental stimuli also impacts risk-taking in subsequent decisions is still poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the interplay between the regulation of incidentally induced emotional responses and subsequent choice behavior using a risky decision-making task in two independent samples (behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment). We found that overall, emotion regulation was followed by less risky decisions, which was further reflected in an increase in activation in brain regions in dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and cingulate cortex. These findings suggest that altering incidental emotions using reappraisal strategies impacts on subsequent risk-taking in decision-making.


Author(s):  
Vykinta Kligyte ◽  
Shane Connelly ◽  
Chase E. Thiel ◽  
Lynn D. Devenport ◽  
Ryan P. Brown ◽  
...  

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