Why Do We Take Risks? Perception of the Situation and Risk Proneness Predict Domain-Specific Risk Taking

Abstract

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.

Keywords: emotion regulation; executive control; locus of control; personality; risk taking; sensation seeking impulsivity.

FIGURE 1

Study hypotheses. Red lines represent positive relation and orange lines represent negative relation.

FIGURE 2

Correlation matrix obtained by Pearson coefficients between every pair of variables and the range of statistical significance by correlation. ^∗p < 0.05, ^∗∗p < 0.01, and ^∗∗∗p < 0.001. Pearson coefficient of 0.285 achieves a power above 80%.