Personality Profile of Risk Takers: An Examination of the Big Five Facets
Risk taking is a long-standing area of inquiry among psychologists and economists. In this paper, we examine the personality profile of risk takers in two independent samples. Specifically, we examined the association between the Big Five facets and risk-taking propensity across two measures: The Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT) and the General Risk Propensity Scale (GRiPS). At the Big Five domain level, we found that extraversion and agreeableness were the primary predictors of risk taking. However, facet-level analyses revealed that responsibility, a facet of conscientiousness, explained most of the total variance accounted for by the Big Five in both risk-taking measures. Based on our findings across two samples (n = 764), we find that the personality profile of a risk taker is extraverted, open to experiences, disagreeable, emotionally stable, and irresponsible. Implications for the risk measurement are discussed.