Intuitive Risk Aversion and Reflective Risk Taking in Gain-Framed Economic Games

Abstract

We typically think of risk taking as impulsive, but evolutionary pressure may actually favor playing it safe as a default strategy. In the context of dual-process theory of reasoning (Evans, 2003), we hypothesized that risk aversion is intuitive for an average decision maker and reflective thinking serves to reduce this intuition. This idea was tested in two studies using economic decision-making tasks. Information processing style was manipulated by forcing fast or slow decisions (Study 1) and by picture priming (Study 2). These manipulations did not affect decisions. We also measured participants' cognitive reflection ability as an individual difference variable in both studies. As expected, greater reflection ability predicted a greater frequency of risky choices (Study 1 and 2). The findings are consistent with the perspective that risk aversion is impulsive while risk taking is reflective, at least under certain conditions.