scholarly journals The Effect of Subjective Loss in Financial Risk Taking and Negative Emotion

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongmei Mei ◽  
Shasha He ◽  
Liman Man Wai Li ◽  
Yiyi Zhu

The current research examined the influence of subjective loss on financial risk-taking tendency and negative emotional experience through inducing the experience of subjective loss in auction scenarios. In Study 1, we found that the subjective loss experience (compared to no-loss experience) in an auction scenario induced greater financial risk propensity, especially in gambling, greater negative emotion, and greater decision regret. In addition, we found that the subjective loss experience induced stronger negative emotion but less risk propensity in investment than the actual loss experience did, but these two types of loss did not yield a difference in risk propensity in gambling in Study 2. These results implicate that subjective loss is a distinct experience from no-loss and actual loss experiences, which is reflected by the degree of associated emotional experience and subsequent risk-taking propensity. The current research highlights the complex psychological processes of the experience of loss in decision-making contexts.

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-291
Author(s):  
Jonathan W Keller ◽  
Keith A Grant ◽  
Dennis M Foster

Abstract What explains a state's decision to intervene in ongoing interstate conflicts? Intervention is a risky proposition, potentially incurring audience costs if the effort is unsuccessful or if casualties and other costs mount. Various domestic political factors and features of the international environment certainly shape the risks surrounding intervention, but recent work in political psychology suggests that individual leaders’ risk-taking propensity, as measured by their locus of control (LOC), greatly influences their willingness to engage in potentially risky actions. In this paper, we examine the link between US presidents’ risk propensity and the frequency with which they intervene internationally. Our analysis of the period 1946–2001 reveals that presidents with an internal LOC are generally more likely to intervene in ongoing conflicts. Moreover, such leaders are specifically more likely to engage in unilateral interventions and those geared toward harming the interests of interstate rivals, indicating a particular predilection toward risk-taking in their decision-making surrounding interventions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikella A Green ◽  
Kendra L Seaman ◽  
Jennifer L Crawford ◽  
Camelia M Kuhnen ◽  
Gregory R Samanez-Larkin

Pharmacological manipulations have revealed that enhancing dopamine increases financial risk taking across adulthood. However, it is unclear whether baseline individual differences in dopamine function, assessed using PET imaging, are related to performance on risky financial decision making tasks. Here, thirty-five healthy adults completed an incentive-compatible learning-based risky investment decision task and a PET scan at rest using [11C]FLB457 to assess dopamine D2-like receptor availability. In the task, participants made choices between a safe asset (bond) and a risky asset (stock) with either an expected value less than the bond (bad stock) or expected value greater than the bond (good stock). Five measures of behavioral performance (choice inflexibility, risk seeking, suboptimal investment) and beliefs (absolute error, optimism) were extracted from the task data and average non-displaceable dopamine D2-like binding potential was extracted from four brain regions of interest (midbrain, amygdala, anterior cingulate, insula) from the PET imaging data. Given the presence of multiple independent and dependent variables, we used canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to evaluate multivariate associations between learning-based decision making and dopamine function controlling for age. Decomposition of the first dimension (r = .76) revealed that the strongest associations were between measures of choice inflexibility, incorrect choice, optimism, amygdala binding potential, and age. Follow-up univariate analyses revealed that amygdala binding potential and age were both independently associated with choice inflexibility. The findings reveal latent associations between baseline neural and behavioral measures suggesting that individual differences in dopamine function may be associated with learning-based financial risk taking in healthy adults.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Silva Moreira ◽  
Pedro Chaves ◽  
Mafalda Machado-Sousa ◽  
Teresa Costa Castanho ◽  
Rita Vieira ◽  
...  

There is a large variety of context-related aspects that shape our decisions. One such aspect is related with the emotional state. Previous studies have suggested that emotional arousal has a role on the modulation of risk-taking behavior in gambling tasks. In this study, we aimed to test this hypothesis. For this purpose, we developed an experimental apparatus, in which we presented highly arousing stimuli with opposing hedonic valences as a strategy for inducting an emotional state. Individuals performed a risky decision-making task, in which they accumulate gains each time they inflate a balloon; however, participants lose the accumulated money if the balloon explodes. The threshold for explosion is unknown for the participant – thus, each time an individual inflates the balloon, participants engage in a gambling behavior. In contrast with theoretical conceptualizations pertaining to the role of arousal on risky decision-making, only stimuli with positive hedonic valence influenced risk-taking – individuals in this experimental condition displayed a reduced tendency to gamble. On the other hand, subjects exposed to the negative emotional induction did not show an altered risky decision-making profile. These results highlight the need for further studies examining the nature of the association between induced emotional experience and risk-taking.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maime Guan ◽  
Ryan Stokes ◽  
Joachim Vandekerckhove ◽  
Michael David Lee

There are many ways to measure how people manage risk when they make decisions. A standard approach is to measure risk propensity using self-report questionnaires. An alternative approach is to use decision-making tasks that involve risk and uncertainty, and apply cognitive models of task behavior to infer parameters that measure people’s risk propensity. We report the results of a within-participants experiment that used three questionnaires and four decision-making tasks. The questionnaires are the Risk Propensity Scale, the Risk Taking Index, and the DomainSpecific Risk Taking Scale. The decision-making tasks are the Balloon Analogue Risk Task, the preferential choice gambling task, the optimal stopping problem, and the bandit problem. We analyze the relationships between the risk measures and cognitive parameters using Bayesian inferences about the patterns of correlation, and using a novel cognitive latent variable modeling approach. The results show that people’s risk propensity is generally consistent within different conditions for each of the decision-making tasks. There is, however, little evidence that the way people manage risk generalizes across the tasks, or that it corresponds to the questionnaire measures.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rod Duclos ◽  
Echo Wen Wan ◽  
Yuwei Jiang

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