scholarly journals Heterogeneity in Risk-Taking During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From the UK Lockdown

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benno Guenther ◽  
Matteo M. Galizzi ◽  
Jet G. Sanders

In two pre-registered online studies during the COVID-19 pandemic and the early 2020 lockdown (one of which with a UK representative sample) we elicit risk-tolerance for 1,254 UK residents using four of the most widely applied risk-taking tasks in behavioral economics and psychology. Specifically, participants completed the incentive-compatible Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) and the Binswanger-Eckel-Grossman (BEG) multiple lotteries task, as well as the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Task (DOSPERT) and the self-reported questions for risk-taking used in the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) study. In addition, participants in the UK representative sample answered a range of questions about COVID-19-related risky behaviors selected from the UCL COVID-19 Social Survey and the ICL-YouGov survey on COVID-19 behaviors. Consistently with pre-COVID-19 times, we find that risk tolerance during the UK lockdown (i) was higher in men than in women and (ii) decreased with age. Undocumented in pre-COVID-19 times, we find some evidence for healthier participants displaying significantly higher risk-tolerance for self-reported risk measures. We find no systematic nor robust patterns of association between the COVID-19 risky behaviors and the four risk-taking tasks in our study. Moreover, we find no evidence in support of the so-called “risk compensation” hypothesis. If anything, it appears that participants who took greater risk in real-life COVID-19-relevant risky behaviors (e.g., isolating or taking precautions) also exhibited higher risk-tolerance in our experimental and self-reported risk-taking measures.

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S533-S533
Author(s):  
Y. Pollak ◽  
H. Aloni ◽  
R. Shoham

Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with increased engagement in risk-taking behaviors. The present study aimed to further our knowledge regarding the extent and the reasons for the association between ADHD symptoms and risk-taking, using a theory-driven behavioral economy theory. The Domain Specific Risk-Taking scale was used, on which 244 adults rated the likelihood of engagement in a range of risky behaviors, across five real life domains, as well as the magnitude of perceived benefit and risk they ascribed to these behaviors. Level of ADHD symptoms was positively correlated with engagement in risky behaviors and benefit perception, but not with risk perception. Mediation analysis confirmed that benefit perception, but not risk perception, mediated the association between ADHD symptoms and engagement in risk-taking behaviors (Fig. 1). These findings emphasize the role of benefit perception in facilitating risk-taking by people with ADHD symptoms.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.


2020 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 1679-1687
Author(s):  
Yu-Xiang Yang ◽  
Kevin Kuo ◽  
Hong-Qi Li ◽  
Xue-Ning Shen ◽  
Shi-Dong Chen ◽  
...  

Background: Several studies have shown risky behaviors and risk tolerance are associated with Alzheimer’s disease. However, the underlying causality remains unclear. Risky behavior and risk tolerance may induce the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and/or vulnerability to Alzheimer’s disease may result in more risky behaviors. Objective: To examine bidirectional relationships between risky behavior, risk tolerance, and Alzheimer’s disease using Mendelian randomization method for assessing potential causal inference. Methods: This bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization study used independent genetic variants associated with risky behaviors and risk tolerance (n = 370, 771– 939, 908), and Alzheimer’s disease (n = 71, 880 – 37, 613) as genetic instruments from large meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies. Results: Our results support a strong protective casual effect of risk-taking tendency on AD (odds ratio [OR] = 0.79; 95% CI, 0.67– 0.94, p = 0.007). There was weak statistically significant relationship between number of sexual partners and AD (OR = 0.50, 95% CI, 0.27– 0.93, p = 0.04), and between family history of AD and automobile speeding propensity (OR = 1.018, 95% CI, 1.005 to 1.031; p = 0.007). Contrary to expectations, there was no statistically significant causal effect of AD on risk-taking tendency (β=  0.015, 95% CI, – 0.005 to 0.04; p = 0.14). Conclusion: Under Mendelian randomization assumptions, our results suggest a protective relationship between risk-taking tendency and the risk of AD. This finding may provide valuable insights into Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis and the development of preventive strategies.


2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 147470490700500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Kruger ◽  
X.T. Wang ◽  
Andreas Wilke

From an evolutionary perspective, human risk-taking behaviors should be viewed in relation to evolutionarily recurrent survival and reproductive problems. In response to recent calls for domain-specific measures of risk-taking, we emphasize the need of evolutionarily valid domains. We report on two studies designed to validate a scale of risky behaviors in domains selected from research and theory in evolutionary psychology and biology, corresponding to reoccurring challenges in the ancestral environment. Behaviors were framed in situations which people would have some chance of encountering in modern times. We identify five domains of risk-taking: between-group competition, within-group competition, mating and resource allocation for mate attraction, environmental risks, and fertility risks.


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tessa Sanderson ◽  
Jo Angouri

The active involvement of patients in decision-making and the focus on patient expertise in managing chronic illness constitutes a priority in many healthcare systems including the NHS in the UK. With easier access to health information, patients are almost expected to be (or present self) as an ‘expert patient’ (Ziebland 2004). This paper draws on the meta-analysis of interview data collected for identifying treatment outcomes important to patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Taking a discourse approach to identity, the discussion focuses on the resources used in the negotiation and co-construction of expert identities, including domain-specific knowledge, access to institutional resources, and ability to self-manage. The analysis shows that expertise is both projected (institutionally sanctioned) and claimed by the patient (self-defined). We close the paper by highlighting the limitations of our pilot study and suggest avenues for further research.


Author(s):  
Prince U.C. Songwa ◽  
Aaqib Saeed ◽  
Sachin Bhardwaj ◽  
Thijs W. Kruisselbrink ◽  
Tanir Ozcelebi

High-quality lighting positively influences visual performance in humans. The experienced visual performance can be measured using desktop luminance and hence several lighting control systems have been developed for its quantification. However, the measurement devices that are used to monitor the desktop luminance in existing lighting control systems are obtrusive to the users. As an alternative, ceiling-based luminance projection sensors are being used recently as these are unobtrusive and can capture the direct task area of a user. The positioning of these devices on the ceiling requires to estimate the desktop luminance in the user's vertical visual field, solely using ceiling-based measurements, to better predict the experienced visual performance of the user. For this purpose, we present LUMNET, an approach for estimating desktop luminance with deep models through utilizing supervised and self-supervised learning. Our model learns visual representations from ceiling-based images, which are collected in indoor spaces within the physical vicinity of the user to predict average desktop luminance as experienced in a real-life setting. We also propose a self-supervised contrastive method for pre-training LUMNET with unlabeled data and we demonstrate that the learned features are transferable onto a small labeled dataset which minimizes the requirement of costly data annotations. Likewise, we perform experiments on domain-specific datasets and show that our approach significantly improves over the baseline results from prior methods in estimating luminance, particularly in the low-data regime. LUMNET is an important step towards learning-based technique for luminance estimation and can be used for adaptive lighting control directly on-device thanks to its minimal computational footprint with an added benefit of preserving user's privacy.


Author(s):  
MORITZ OSNABRÜGGE ◽  
SARA B. HOBOLT ◽  
TONI RODON

Research has shown that emotions matter in politics, but we know less about when and why politicians use emotive rhetoric in the legislative arena. This article argues that emotive rhetoric is one of the tools politicians can use strategically to appeal to voters. Consequently, we expect that legislators are more likely to use emotive rhetoric in debates that have a large general audience. Our analysis covers two million parliamentary speeches held in the UK House of Commons and the Irish Parliament. We use a dictionary-based method to measure emotive rhetoric, combining the Affective Norms for English Words dictionary with word-embedding techniques to create a domain-specific dictionary. We show that emotive rhetoric is more pronounced in high-profile legislative debates, such as Prime Minister’s Questions. These findings contribute to the study of legislative speech and political representation by suggesting that emotive rhetoric is used by legislators to appeal directly to voters.


2021 ◽  
pp. 027623662096063
Author(s):  
Michael Schredl ◽  
Mark Blagrove

Animal dreams have fascinated mankind for ages. Empirical research indicated that children dream more often about animals than adults and dogs, cats, and horses are the most frequent animals that appear within dreams. Moreover, most dreamer-animal interactions are negative. The present study included 4849 participants (6 to 90 yrs. old) reporting 2716 most recent dreams. Overall, 18.30% of these dreams included animals with children reporting more animal dreams that adolescents and adults. The most frequent animals were again dogs, horses, and cats; about 20% of the dream animals were in fact pets of the dreamers. About 30% of the dream animals showed bizarre features, e.g., metamorphosing into humans or other animals, bigger than in real life, or can talk. Taken together, the findings support the continuity hypothesis of dreaming but also the idea that dreams reflect waking-life emotions in a metaphorical and dramatized way. Future studies should focus on eliciting waking-life experiences with animals, e.g., having a pet, animal-related media consumption, and relating these to experiences with animals in dreams.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
João F. Guassi Moreira ◽  
Eva H. Telzer

We tested two competing predictions of whether changes in parent–child relationship quality buffer or exacerbate the association between sensation-seeking and risk-taking behaviors as individuals gain more independence during the high school–college transition. In the current longitudinal study, 287 participants completed self-report measures of sensation seeking, risk-taking, and parent–child relationship quality with their parents prior to starting college and again during their first semester. Overall, students displayed increases in risky behaviors, which were predicted by sensation seeking. Changes in relationship quality moderated the association between sensation seeking and risk-taking, such that sensation seeking predicted higher risk-taking behaviors during the first semester of college, but only for those who reported increases in relationship quality across the college transition. These results suggest that increased relationship quality may have an inadvertent spillover effect by interacting with sensation seeking to increase risky behaviors.


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