Social comparison and risky choices

Social comparison and risky choices

Theories (and experiments) on decision making under risk typically ignore (and exclude) a social context. We explore whether this omission is detrimental. To do so we experimentally investigate the simplest possible situation with both social comparison and risk: participants choose between two lotteries while a referent faces a fixed payoff. Participants are more risk averse when they can earn...

Salience, Risky Choices and Gender

Salience, Risky Choices and Gender Risk theories typically assume individuals make risky choices using probability weights that differ from objective probabilities. Recent theories suggest that probability weights vary depending on which portion of a risky environment is made salient. Using experimental data we show that salience affects young men and women differently, even after controlling f...

Human Preferences and Risky Choices

however, even stability of parameter values over time and across contexts in the different models does not imply correct model identification, as the parameters map onto different psychological variables. Betsch argues and provides evidence for the conceptualization of preferences as attitudes, whose stability is determined by behavior repetition and processing style. According to Hertwig and G...

Risky Choices and Correlated Background Risk

Pre-existing brain states predict risky choices

Rational decision-making models assume that people resolve an economic problem based on its properties and the underlying utility. Here we challenge this view by examining whether pre-stimulus endogenous neuronal fluctuations can bias economic decisions. We recorded subjects' pre-stimulus neural activation patterns with fMRI before presentation and choice between pairs of certain outcomes and r...