this study aimed to study the risky behavior and its relationship with social capital amongst the high school students of kerman city. social capital theories of colman and putnam were selected as the theoretical framework. the abstracted variables of research model are social capital (network ties of respondent with teachers, family and friends. network ties of respondents’ family with school)...

human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) is a public health challenge facing both developing and developed nations. although injecting drug use is even the main route of hiv transmission in iran, sexual route is rising gradually. vulnerable women have been considered as important bridging population for driving hiv epidemics. to increase the access to vulnerable women, in 2007, 5 pilot centers were e...

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...

The aim of the current study was to examine attachment style as a predictor of risky sexual behavior in a younger, more vulnerable sample than previously investigated in the literature: High school aged adolescents. The hypothesized associations among the variables were partially supported. Contrary to our predictions, there was no significant association between avoidance and risky sexual beha...

A lifetime portfolio of risky and risk-free sexual activities is conceptually constructed in this paper. People's time allocation between risky and risk-free sexual activities affects, and is affected by, the prevalence of AIDS. A small satisfaction differential between risky and risk-free sex can lead to a significant prevalence of AIDS. Numerical simulations suggest that the reduction in the ...

Neuroimaging methods (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging or FMRI) can now resolve momentary changes in deep brain activity that not only correlate with but also predict risky choice. Accumulating evidence beginning from financial choice studies but extending into other domains indicates that risk assessment recruits activity in multiple core components which differentially promote (e.g...

In this paper, we apply particle swarm optimisation to the construction of optimal risky portfolios for financial investments. Constructing an optimal risky portfolio is a high-dimensional constrained optimisation problem where financial investors look for an optimal combination of their investments among different financial assets with the aim of achieving a maximum reward-to-variability ratio...

Alcohol dependence is associated with heightened risk tolerance and altered decision-making. This raises the question as to whether alcohol dependent patients (ADP) are incapable of proper risk assessment. We investigated how healthy controls (HC) and ADP engage neural networks to cope with the increased cognitive demands of risky decisions. We collected fMRI data while 34 HC and 16 ADP played ...

There is a paucity of experimental data addressing how peers influence adolescent risk-taking. Here, we examined peer effects on risky decision-making in adults and adolescents using a virtual social context that enabled experimental control over the peer "interactions." 40 adolescents (age 11-18) and 28 adults (age 20-38) completed a risk-taking (Wheel of Fortune) task under four conditions: i...

Adolescents engage in more risky behavior when they are with peers and show, on average, heightened susceptibility to peer influence relative to children and adults. However, individual differences in susceptibility to peer influence are not well understood. The current study examined whether the effect of peers on adolescents’ risky decision making was moderated by pubertal status. Participant...