An evolutionary domain-specific risk scale.

Abstract

We present a psychometric scale that assesses risk-taking in 10 evolutionary content domains: between-group competition, within-group competition, status-power, environmental exploration, food selection, food acquisition, parent-offspring conflict, kinship, mate attraction, and mate retention. We report on three studies that evaluate the scale’s validity and consistency for a sample of 1,326 participants who rated their likelihood of engagement in, the perceived riskiness of, and the benefit associated with various risky activities. Behaviors were framed as modern-day analogues of qualitatively similar actions in recurring problem domains of the ancestral environment that were potentially beneficial but also potentially costly to survival and reproductive success. As expected, respondents’ degree of risk-taking was not consistently risk-averse or risk-seeking across content domains, and a set of eight life-history variables had domain-specific effects on risk-taking propensity. In most domains, men were significantly more risk-seeking than women, but in 2 of the 10 domains—food selection and kinship risks—women were more risk-prone than men. Participants who reported not being married or in a committed relationship scored significantly higher in the domains of mate attraction and mate retention. Age, reproductive goal-setting, parental status, number of siblings, and birth order also affected the formation of risk thresholds.

The Relevance of Subjective Benefits in Risky Choice Across ten Domains of Life

“…The best model also shows domaindifferences in the risk-taking propensities (post-hoc comparisons, see Table A1 in the Appendix), similar to previous findings (Wilke et al, 2014). The results show no significant overall gender difference (Δ f-m = 0.055, p = .478), but differences in certain domains, which is contrary to the common notion that men are consistently more risk-taking than women (Byrnes et al, 1999).…”

“…In the first session and before the choice task, participants were familiarized with the ten behaviors and it was made clear that each behavior might have both costs and benefits. Participants then reported the subjective size of the costs and benefits of engaging in all the behaviors 1 , beliefs about the probabilities of these benefits and costs 2 , filled in a domain-specific risk attitude scale (ERS, Wilke et al, 2014), and reported demographic and life-history data (not reported here). In the choice task, which was presented as "game of daily life", participants decided about engaging in or refraining from behaviors in ten domains, such as work weekends to outperform your colleagues to be considered for a promotion (within-group competition domain).…”

Upper‐Body Strength and Political Egalitarianism: Twelve Conceptual Replications

“…To assess this, we utilize Study 4. In this study, we have available measures of formidability, SDO, and individual variation in willingness to take risks across 10 different domains that reflect significant problems over human evolutionary history (The Evolutionary Risk Scale; Wilke et al, ). Specifically, these domains are: between‐group competition, within‐group competition (specifically, taking on leadership roles), status and power seeking, environmental exploration, food selection, food acquisition, parent‐offspring conflict, helping kin, mate attraction, and mate retention.…”

Spatial and Social Behavior of Single and Coupled Individuals of Both Sexes during COVID-19 Lockdown Regime in Russia

“…This result was puzzling as the evolution of risk-sensitive responses for men who already have a sexual partner should favor distancing and decrease their mating efforts. For instance, Wilke with coauthors [78] had shown that, in the domains of mate retention and attraction, single individuals gave higher scores on propensity of risk-taking behavior than those who were married or in a committed relationship. Contradicting to the Wilke with coauthors study, our results have shown that coupled men demonstrated an even higher level of sociosexual activity than single men.…”