title: The Role of Psychological and Physiological Factors in Decision Making under Risk and in a Dilemma.
abstract: Different methods to elicit risk attitudes of individuals often provide differing results despite a common theory. Reasons for such inconsistencies may be the different influence of underlying factors in risk-taking decisions. In order to evaluate this conjecture, a better understanding of underlying factors across methods and decision contexts is desirable. In this paper we study the difference in result of two different risk elicitation methods by linking estimates of risk attitudes to gender, age, and personality traits, which have been shown to be related. We also investigate the role of these factors during decision-making in a dilemma situation. For these two decision contexts we also investigate the decision-maker's physiological state during the decision, measured by heart rate variability (HRV), which we use as an indicator of emotional involvement. We found that the two elicitation methods provide different individual risk attitude measures which is partly reflected in a different gender effect between the methods. Personality traits explain only relatively little in terms of driving risk attitudes and the difference between methods. We also found that risk taking and the physiological state are related for one of the methods, suggesting that more emotionally involved individuals are more risk averse in the experiment. Finally, we found evidence that personality traits are connected to whether individuals made a decision in the dilemma situation, but risk attitudes and the physiological state were not indicative for the ability to decide in this decision context.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, Joint Research Centre Ispra, Italy.
authors.forename: Jonas
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fooken
authors.affiliation: Business School, Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schaffner
keywords: dilemma decision; elicitation methods; personality traits; physiological measures; risk preferences
references.citation: Nat Neurosci. 2005 Sep;8(9):1220-7
references.pmid: 16116449
references.citation: J Neurosci Res. 2015 Jun;93(6):839-47
references.pmid: 25483118
references.citation: Psychophysiology. 1994 Nov;31(6):599-608
references.pmid: 7846220
references.citation: Neuron. 2005 Sep 1;47(5):763-70
references.pmid: 16129404
references.citation: Psychol Bull. 2001 Mar;127(2):267-86
references.pmid: 11316014
references.citation: Neuroimage. 2009 Jan 1;44(1):213-22
references.pmid: 18778779
references.citation: Brain. 2003 Oct;126(Pt 10):2139-52
references.pmid: 12821513
references.citation: Psychol Addict Behav. 2005 Sep;19(3):311-6
references.pmid: 16187811
references.citation: Neuroimage. 2010 Jan 15;49(2):1886-94
references.pmid: 19761850
references.citation: PLoS One. 2009 Dec 31;4(12):e8516
references.pmid: 20046877
references.citation: Psychol Sci. 2009 Mar;20(3):278-83
references.pmid: 19207694
references.citation: J Neurosci. 2008 Mar 12;28(11):2745-52
references.pmid: 18337404
references.citation: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Mar 15;102(11):4209-14
references.pmid: 15753321
references.citation: Psychophysiology. 2004 Jul;41(4):521-30
references.pmid: 15189475
references.citation: Circulation. 1996 Mar 1;93(5):1043-65
references.pmid: 8598068
references.citation: Science. 2005 Dec 9;310(5754):1680-3
references.pmid: 16339445
references.citation: Neuron. 2006 Mar 2;49(5):765-75
references.pmid: 16504951
references.citation: Science. 2001 Sep 14;293(5537):2105-8
references.pmid: 11557895
references.citation: Nat Neurosci. 2008 Apr;11(4):398-403
references.pmid: 18368046
references.citation: Biol Psychiatry. 2000 Nov 1;48(9):948-53
references.pmid: 11074233
references.citation: Neuroimage. 2011 Oct 1;58(3):963-73
references.pmid: 21749924