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ABSTRACT Risk preference is a key concept across social, economic, and decision sciences. While existing measures assess risk taking either as domain‐specific preferences (e.g., finance and health) or as a general trait, they have largely overlooked individual differences in the narrow, domain‐general aspects of risk preference. Drawing from a dual‐process framework, we advance a multidimensional domain‐general measure of risk preference. We develop and validate the Calculated and Spontaneous Risk‐Taking Scale across seven studies (N = 2116). Results show (1) the two risk styles are moderately correlated and align with existing risk preference measures; (2) they are distinct from personality traits like the Big Five and cognitive traits like decision style; (3) calculated risk‐takers show more variability in risk attitudes across contexts; (4) calculated risk‐taking predicts adaptive outcomes (e.g., creativity and entrepreneurship), while spontaneous risk‐taking predicts maladaptive behaviors (e.g., crime, safety violations); and (5) the scale is invariant across sex and age. Overall, calculated risk‐takers engage in more adaptive risks, leading to healthier, more meaningful lives.
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Monotone Additive Statistics
The expectation is an example of a descriptive statistic that is monotone with respect to stochastic dominance, and additive for sums of independent random variables. We provide a complete characterization of such statistics, and explore a number of applications to models of individual and group decision‐making. These include a representation of stationary monotone time preferences, extending the work of Fishburn and Rubinstein (1982) to time lotteries. This extension offers a new perspective on risk attitudes toward time, as well as on the aggregation of multiple discount factors. We also offer a novel class of non‐expected utility preferences over gambles which satisfy invariance to background risk as well as betweenness, but are versatile enough to capture mixed risk attitudes.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1944153
- PAR ID:
- 10625493
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Econometrica
- Volume:
- 92
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0012-9682
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 995 to 1031
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA19967
