Convergence of Age Differences in Risk Preference, Impulsivity, and Self-Control: A Multiverse Analysis.

OBJECTIVES: Numerous theories exist regarding age differences in risk preference and related constructs, yet many of them offer conflicting predictions and fail to consider convergence between measurement modalities or constructs. To pave the way for conceptual clarification and theoretical refinement, in this preregistered study we aimed to comprehensively examine age effects on risk preference, impulsivity, and self-control using different measurement modalities, and to assess their convergence. METHODS: We collected a large battery of self-report, informant report, behavioral, hormone, and neuroimaging measures from a cross-sectional sample of 148 (55% female) healthy human participants between 16 and 81 years (mean age = 46 years, standard deviation [SD] = 19). We used an extended sample of 182 participants (54% female, mean age = 46 years, SD = 19) for robustness checks concerning the results from self-reports, informant reports, and behavioral measures. For our main analysis, we performed specification curve analyses to visualize and estimate the convergence between the different modalities and constructs. RESULTS: Our multiverse analysis approach revealed convergent results for risk preference, impulsivity, and self-control from self- and informant reports, suggesting a negative effect of age. For behavioral, hormonal, and neuroimaging outcomes, age effects were mostly absent. DISCUSSION: Our findings call for conceptual clarification and improved operationalization to capture the putative mechanisms underlying age-related differences in risk preference and related constructs.

Psychological Drivers of Individual Differences in Risk Perception: A Systematic Case Study Focusing on 5G.

What drives people's perceptions of novel risks, and how malleable are such risk perceptions? Psychological research has identified multiple potential drivers of risk perception, but no studies have yet tested within a unified analytic framework how well each of these drivers accounts for individual differences in large population samples. To provide such a framework, I harnessed the deployment of 5G-the latest generation of cellular network technology. Specifically, I conducted a multiverse analysis using a representative population sample in Switzerland (Study 1; N = 2,919 individuals between 15 and 94 years old), finding that interindividual differences in risk perceptions were strongly associated with hazard-related drivers (e.g., trust in the institutions regulating 5G, dread) and person-specific drivers (e.g., electromagnetic hypersensitivity)-and strongly predictive of people's policy-related attitudes (e.g., voting intentions). Further, a field experiment based on a national expert report on 5G (N = 839 individuals in a longitudinal sample between 17 and 79 years old) identified links between intraindividual changes in psychological drivers and perceived risk, thus highlighting potential targets for future policy interventions.

Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic it is important to identify factors that make people particularly vulnerable of developing mental-health issues in order to provide case-specific treatments. In this article, we examine the roles of two psychological constructs - originally put forth in the behavioral decision sciences - in predicting interindividual differences in fear responses: general risk aversion (GRA) and intolerance of uncertainty (IU). We first provide a review of these constructs and illustrate why they may play important roles in shaping anxiety-related disorders. Thereafter we present an empirical study that collected survey data from 550 U.S. residents, comprising self-assessments of dispositions towards risk and uncertainty, anxiety- and depression levels, as well as demographic variables - to thus test the extent to which these psychological constructs are predictive of strong fear responses related to COVID-19 (i.e., mortal fear, racing heart). The results from Bayesian multi-model inference analyses showed that GRA and IU were more powerful predictors of fear responses than demographic variables. Moreover, the predictive power of these constructs was independent of general anxiety- and depression levels. Subsequent mediation analyses showed that the effects of GRA and IU were both direct and indirect via anxiety. We conclude by discussing possible treatment options, but also highlight that future research needs to further examine causal pathways and conceptual overlaps.

Representative design in psychological assessment: A case study using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART).

Representative design refers to the idea that experimental stimuli should be sampled or designed such that they represent the environments to which measured constructs are supposed to generalize. In this article we investigate the role of representative design in achieving valid and reliable psychological assessments, by focusing on a widely used behavioral measure of risk taking-the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Specifically, we demonstrate that the typical implementation of this task violates the principle of representative design, thus conflicting with the expectations people likely form from real balloons. This observation may provide an explanation for the previously observed limitations in some of the BART's psychometric properties (e.g., convergent validity with other measures of risk taking). To experimentally test the effects of improved representative designs, we conducted two extensive empirical studies (N = 772 and N = 632), finding that participants acquired more accurate beliefs about the optimal behavior in the BART because of these task adaptions. Yet, improving the task's representativeness proved to be insufficient to enhance the BART's psychometric properties. It follows that for the development of valid behavioral measurement instruments-as are needed, for instance, in functional neuroimaging studies-our field has to overcome the philosophy of the "repair program" (i.e., fixing existing tasks). Instead, we suggest that the development of valid task designs requires novel ecological assessments, aimed at identifying those real-life behaviors and associated psychological processes that lab tasks are supposed to capture and generalize to. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Identifying robust correlates of risk preference: A systematic approach using specification curve analysis.

People's risk preferences are thought to be central to many consequential real-life decisions, making it important to identify robust correlates of this construct. Various psychological theories have put forth a series of candidate correlates, yet the strength and robustness of their associations remain unclear because of disparate operationalizations of risk preference and analytic limitations in past research. We addressed these issues with a study involving several operationalizations of risk preference (all collected from each participant in a diverse sample of the German population; N = 916), and by adopting an exhaustive modeling approach-specification curve analysis. Our analyses of 6 candidate correlates (household income, sex, age, fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence, years of education) suggest that sex and age have robust and consistent associations with risk preference, whereas the other candidate correlates show weaker and more (domain-) specific associations (except for crystallized intelligence, for which there were no robust associations). The results further demonstrate the important role of construct operationalization when assessing people's risk preferences: Self-reported propensity measures picked up various associations with the proposed correlates, but (incentivized) behavioral measures largely failed to do so. In short, the associations between the 6 candidate correlates and risk preference depend mostly on how risk preference is measured, rather than whether and which control variables are included in the model specifications. The present findings inform several theories that have suggested candidate correlates of risk preference, and illustrate how personality research may profit from exhaustive modeling techniques to improve theory and measurement of essential constructs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Brain-Behavior Associations for Risk Taking Depend on the Measures Used to Capture Individual Differences.

Maladaptive risk taking can have severe individual and societal consequences; thus, individual differences are prominent targets for intervention and prevention. Although brain activation has been shown to be associated with individual differences in risk taking, the directionality of the reported brain-behavior associations is less clear. Here, we argue that one aspect contributing to the mixed results is the low convergence between risk-taking measures, especially between the behavioral tasks used to elicit neural functional markers. To address this question, we analyzed within-participant neuroimaging data for two widely used risk-taking tasks collected from the imaging subsample of the Basel-Berlin Risk Study (N = 116 young human adults). Focusing on core brain regions implicated in risk taking (nucleus accumbens, anterior insula, and anterior cingulate cortex), for the two tasks, we examined group-level activation for risky versus safe choices, as well as associations between local functional markers and various risk-related outcomes, including psychometrically derived risk preference factors. While we observed common group-level activation in the two tasks (notably increased nucleus accumbens activation), individual differences analyses support the idea that the presence and directionality of associations between brain activation and risk taking varies as a function of the risk-taking measures used to capture individual differences. Our results have methodological implications for the use of brain markers for intervention or prevention.

No effect of birth order on adult risk taking.

Does birth order shape people's propensity to take risks? Evidence is mixed. We used a three-pronged approach to investigate birth-order effects on risk taking. First, we examined the propensity to take risks as measured by a self-report questionnaire administered in the German Socio-Economic Panel, one of the largest and most comprehensive household surveys. Second, we drew on data from the Basel-Berlin Risk Study, one of the most exhaustive attempts to measure risk preference. This study administered 39 risk-taking measures, including a set of incentivized behavioral tasks. Finally, we considered the possibility that birth-order differences in risk taking are not reflected in survey responses and laboratory studies. We thus examined another source of behavioral data: the risky life decision to become an explorer or a revolutionary. Findings from these three qualitatively different sources of data and analytic methods point unanimously in the same direction: We found no birth-order effects on risk taking.

Deciding on behalf of others: a population survey on procedural preferences for surrogate decision-making.

OBJECTIVES: To assess people's procedural preferences for making medical surrogate decisions, from the perspectives of both a potential surrogate and an incapacitated patient. DESIGN: Computer-assisted telephone interviews. Respondents were randomly assigned either the role of an incapacitated patient or that of a potential surrogate for an incapacitated family member. They were asked to rate six approaches to making a surrogate decision: patient-designated surrogate, discussion among family members, majority vote of family members' individual judgements, legally assigned surrogate, population-based treatment indicator and delegating the decision to a physician. SETTING: Germany and German-speaking and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. PARTICIPANTS: 2010 respondents were quota sampled from a panel (representative for the German and German-speaking and French-speaking Swiss populations, respectively, in terms of age, sex and regions). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Endorsement of each approach (rated on a scale from 1 to 10). Degree to which preferences overlap between the perspective of potential surrogates and potential patients. RESULTS: Respondents' endorsement of the six different approaches varied markedly (from Mdn=9.3 to Mdn=2.6). Yet the preferences of respondents taking the perspective of incapacitated patients corresponded closely with those of respondents taking the perspective of a potential surrogate (absolute differences ranging from 0.1 to 1.3). The preferred approaches were a patient-designated surrogate (Mdn=9.3) and all family members making a collective decision by means of group discussion (Mdn=9.3). The two least-preferred approaches were relying on a statistical prediction rule (Mdn=3.0) and delegating the decision to a physician (Mdn=2.6). CONCLUSIONS: Although respondents taking the perspective of an incapacitated patient preferred a patient-designated surrogate, few people have designated such a surrogate in practice. Policy-makers may thus consider implementing active choice, that is, identifying institutional settings in which many people can be reached (eg, when obtaining a driver's licence) and requesting them to complete advance directives and to designate a specific surrogate. Moreover, potential patients and surrogates alike highly valued shared surrogate decisions among family members. Policy-makers may consider acknowledging this possibility explicitly in future legislation, and caregivers and physicians may consider promoting shared surrogate decisions in practice.

Risk preference shares the psychometric structure of major psychological traits.

To what extent is there a general factor of risk preference, R, akin to g, the general factor of intelligence? Can risk preference be regarded as a stable psychological trait? These conceptual issues persist because few attempts have been made to integrate multiple risk-taking measures, particularly measures from different and largely unrelated measurement traditions (self-reported propensity measures assessing stated preferences, incentivized behavioral measures eliciting revealed preferences, and frequency measures assessing actual risky activities). Adopting a comprehensive psychometric approach (1507 healthy adults completing 39 risk-taking measures, with a subsample of 109 participants completing a retest session after 6 months), we provide a substantive empirical foundation to address these issues, finding that correlations between propensity and behavioral measures were weak. Yet, a general factor of risk preference, R, emerged from stated preferences and generalized to specific and actual real-world risky activities (for example, smoking). Moreover, R proved to be highly reliable across time, indicative of a stable psychological trait. Our findings offer a first step toward a general mapping of the construct risk preference, which encompasses both general and domain-specific components, and have implications for the assessment of risk preference in the laboratory and in the wild.

A test of the diffusion model explanation for the worst performance rule using preregistration and blinding.

People with higher IQ scores also tend to perform better on elementary cognitive-perceptual tasks, such as deciding quickly whether an arrow points to the left or the right Jensen (2006). The worst performance rule (WPR) finesses this relation by stating that the association between IQ and elementary-task performance is most pronounced when this performance is summarized by people's slowest responses. Previous research has shown that the WPR can be accounted for in the Ratcliff diffusion model by assuming that the same ability parameter-drift rate-mediates performance in both elementary tasks and higher-level cognitive tasks. Here we aim to test four qualitative predictions concerning the WPR and its diffusion model explanation in terms of drift rate. In the first stage, the diffusion model was fit to data from 916 participants completing a perceptual two-choice task; crucially, the fitting happened after randomly shuffling the key variable, i.e., each participant's score on a working memory capacity test. In the second stage, after all modeling decisions were made, the key variable was unshuffled and the adequacy of the predictions was evaluated by means of confirmatory Bayesian hypothesis tests. By temporarily withholding the mapping of the key predictor, we retain flexibility for proper modeling of the data (e.g., outlier exclusion) while preventing biases from unduly influencing the results. Our results provide evidence against the WPR and suggest that it may be less robust and less ubiquitous than is commonly believed.

The risk elicitation puzzle.

Evidence shows that people's preference for risk changes considerably when measured using different methods, which led us to question whether the common practice of using a single behavioural elicitation method (EM) reflects a valid measure. The present study addresses this question by examining the across-methods consistency of observed risk preferences in 1,507 healthy participants using six EMs. Our analyses show that risk preferences are not consistent across methods when operationalized on an absolute scale, a rank scale or the level of model parameters of cumulative prospect theory. This is at least partly explained by the finding that participants do not consistently follow the same decision strategy across EMs. After controlling for methodological and human factors that may impede consistency, our results challenge the view that different EMs manage to stably capture risk preference. Instead, we interpret the results as suggesting that risk preferences may be constructed when they are elicited, and different cognitive processes can lead to varying preferences.

Risk taking across the life span: A comparison of self-report and behavioral measures of risk taking.

Aging has long been thought to be associated with changes in risk-taking propensity. But do different measures converge in showing similar age-related patterns? We conducted a study to investigate the convergent validity of different self-report and behavioral assessments of risk taking across adulthood (N = 902). Individuals between 18 and 90 years of age answered a self-report item and completed 2 incentivized behavioral tasks: a gambles task and the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. Our results indicate that although all measures show some patterns indicative of an age reduction in risk taking, the correlations between measures are small. Moreover, age differences in behavioral paradigms seem to emerge as a function of specific task characteristics, such as learning and computational demands. We discuss the importance of understanding how specific task characteristics engender age differences in risk taking and the need for future work that disentangles task demands from true age-related changes in risk-taking propensity. (PsycINFO Database Record

The role of cognitive abilities in decisions from experience: Age differences emerge as a function of choice set size.

People seldom enjoy access to summarized information about risky options before making a decision. Instead, they may search for information and learn about environmental contingencies-thus making decisions from experience. Aging is associated with notable deficits in learning and memory-but do these translate into poorer decisions from experience? We report three studies that used a sampling paradigm to investigate younger (M=24 years) and older (M=71 years) adults' decisions from experience. In Study 1 (N=121) participants made 12 decisions between pairs of payoff distributions in the lab. Study 2 (N=70) implemented the same paradigm using portable devices, collecting 84 decisions per individual over a week. Study 3 (N=84) extended the sampling paradigm by asking participants to make 12 decisions between two, four, and eight payoff distributions (in the lab). Overall, the behavioral results suggest that younger and older adults are relatively similar in how they search and what they choose when facing two payoff distributions (Studies 1 and 2). With an increasing number of payoff distributions, however, age differences emerged (Study 3). A modeling analysis on the level of individual participants showed that a simple delta-learning rule model best described the learning processes of most participants. To the extent that ongoing updating processes unfold relatively automatically and effortlessly, older adults may be liberated from the detrimental consequences of cognitive aging in the case of decisions from experience with few decision options. We discuss implications for research on decisions from experience and choice performance over the lifespan.

Sell in may and go away? Learning and risk taking in nonmonotonic decision problems.

In nonmonotonic decision problems, the magnitude of outcomes can both increase and decrease over time depending on the state of the decision problem. These increases and decreases may occur repeatedly and result in a variety of possible outcome distributions. In many previously investigated sequential decision problems, in contrast, outcomes (or the probabilities of obtaining specific outcomes) change monotonically in 1 direction. To investigate how and to what extent people learn in nonmonotonic decision problems, we developed a new task, the Sequential Investment Task (SIT), in which people sequentially decide whether or not to sell shares at several selling points over the course of virtual days. Across trials, they can learn which selling point yields the highest payoff in a specific market. The results of 2 experiments suggest that a reinforcement-learning model generally describes participants' learning processes best. Learning largely depends on an interaction of the complexity of the stochastic process that generates the outcome distribution (i.e., whether the peak selling point is early or late in the selling period and whether there are single or multiple payoff maxima) and the amount of feedback that is available for learning. Although the risk profile in nonmonotonic decision problems renders exploration relatively safe, a clear gap persisted between the choices of people receiving partial feedback (thus facing an exploration-exploitation trade-off) and those of people receiving full feedback: Only the choices of the latter consistently approximated the peak selling points.

Fear shapes information acquisition in decisions from experience.

Before making decisions, people often need to explore their environment to learn about initially uncertain outcomes. To date, it remains unknown to what extent a person's emotional state shapes exploration in such decisions from experience. It has been suggested that fear regulates people's informational interface with the external world through its physiological expression (e.g., a more effective sampling of the visual field from widened eyes). We investigated whether-as suggested by appraisal tendency theories of emotions-the "emotional feeling" of fear triggers analogous changes in exploration, in terms of increased information sampling in decisions from experience. In two studies, one with naturally occurring emotional states and one with induced emotional states, we found that fearful (relative to happy) people sampled substantially more information before making a final choice. These different degrees of exploration influenced the experience of rarity and, in turn, final choices. We discuss the extent to which increased information acquisition is adaptive.

Surrogate decision making: do we have to trade off accuracy and procedural satisfaction?

OBJECTIVE: Making surrogate decisions on behalf of incapacitated patients can raise difficult questions for relatives, physicians, and society. Previous research has focused on the accuracy of surrogate decisions (i.e., the proportion of correctly inferred preferences). Less attention has been paid to the procedural satisfaction that patients' surrogates and patients attribute to specific approaches to making surrogate decisions. The objective was to investigate hypothetical patients' and surrogates' procedural satisfaction with specific approaches to making surrogate decisions and whether implementing these preferences would lead to tradeoffs between procedural satisfaction and accuracy. METHODS: Study 1 investigated procedural satisfaction by assigning participants (618 in a mixed-age but relatively young online sample and 50 in an older offline sample) to the roles of hypothetical surrogates or patients. Study 2 (involving 64 real multigenerational families with a total of 253 participants) investigated accuracy using 24 medical scenarios. RESULTS: Hypothetical patients and surrogates had closely aligned preferences: Procedural satisfaction was highest with a patient-designated surrogate, followed by shared surrogate decision-making approaches and legally assigned surrogates. These approaches did not differ substantially in accuracy. Limitations are that participants' preferences regarding existing and novel approaches to making surrogate decisions can only be elicited under hypothetical conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Next to decision making by patient-designated surrogates, shared surrogate decision making is the preferred approach among patients and surrogates alike. This approach appears to impose no tradeoff between procedural satisfaction and accuracy. Therefore, shared decision making should be further studied in representative samples of the general population, and if people's preferences prove to be robust, they deserve to be weighted more strongly in legal frameworks in addition to patient-designated surrogates.