Experiencing risk: Higher-order risk attitudes in description- and experience-based decisions

Christoph K. Becker, Eyal Ert, Stefan T. Trautmann*, Gijs van de Kuilen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

Abstract

Risky decisions are often characterized by (a) imprecision about consequences and their likelihoods that can be reduced by information collection, and by (b) unavoidable background risk. This article addresses both aspects by eliciting risk attitude, prudence, and temperance in decisions from description and decisions from experience. The results reveal a novel description-experience gap for prudence and replicate the known gap for risky decisions. While widespread prudence has been observed in decisions form description, we find no evidence of prudent decision making from experience. In decisions from experience people are strongly influenced by the sampled mean, while skewness plays a smaller role than in decisions from description.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)727-746
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Volume47
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2021

Keywords

  • higher-order risk attitudes
  • prudence
  • temperance
  • description-experience gap
  • sampling
  • PROSPECT-THEORY
  • RARE EVENTS
  • PRUDENCE
  • DEMAND
  • PREFERENCES
  • UNCERTAINTY
  • VALUATIONS
  • INSURANCE
  • SKEWNESS
  • OUTCOMES

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Experiencing risk: Higher-order risk attitudes in description- and experience-based decisions'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this