Framing Alters Risk-Taking Behavior on a Modified Balloon Analogue Risk Task (Bart) in a Sex-Specific Manner

Abstract

Framing uncertain scenarios to emphasize potential positive or negative elements influences decision making and behavior. The current experiment investigated sex differences in framing effects on risk-taking propensity in a modified version of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Male and female undergraduates completed questionnaires on sensation seeking, impulsiveness, and risk and benefit perception prior to viewing one of three framing conditions for the BART: (1) positively-framed instructions emphasizing the ability to earn money if balloons were inflated to large size; (2) negatively framed instructions emphasizing the possibility that money could be lost if balloons were inflated to bursting; and (3) completely framed instructions noting both possible outcomes. Results revealed correlations between BART performance and impulsiveness for both sexes. Compared to positive and complete framing, negatively framed instructions decreased balloon inflation time in women but not men, indicating sex differences in response to treatments designed to alter risk-taking behavior.

Bursting with anxiety: Adult social referencing in an interpersonal Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART).

“…In the anxiety-expression condition, frame had no impact on BART scores. Another study (Gabriel & Williamson, 2010) published after we conducted ours also failed to replicate Benjamin and Robbins' (2007) framing effect using a modified version of BART, showing null or reverse effects across conditions as in the present study. It, therefore, seems that procedural variations can moderate the pattern of findings when BART methodology is used.…”

“…Because the task had to be completed twice by each participant pair, we also reduced the highest number of pumps that could produce an explosion to 20, which also brought the advantage of making each round faster-paced (see also Rao, Korczykowski, Pluta, Hoang, & Detre, 2008, who reduced the maximum number of pumps per trial to 12, and Gabriel & Williamson, 2010, who restricted maximum pumping time per balloon to 20 seconds). We also wanted to ensure that players would have sufficient time to register the reference person's reaction before choosing to continue pumping and, therefore, increased the minimum number of pumps that could produce an explosion to five.…”

“…1Following recently published research by Gabriel and Williamson (2010), we checked the extent to which the effects of frame and expression on risk scores were moderated by participant gender. Gender had a significant main effect on only one of our risk measures (corrected BART: F (1, 36) = 4.39, p = .043, η p 2 = .11), showing lower risk scores for women than for men, and there were no significant interactions between gender and other independent variables for any of the three risk measures.…”

Sex differences are not attenuated by a sex-invariant measure of fear: The situated fear questionnaire

“…Experimentally framing a risky choice in such a way as to draw attention to potential negative consequences reduces risk taking in women but not men (Gabriel & Williamson, 2010). In the present study, in addition to completing fear ratings, we asked respondents to rate the hedonic valence, ranging from negative (distress) to positive (exhilaration), associated with the questionnaire's various fear-provoking situations.…”

Impact of Induced Moods, Sensation Seeking, and Emotional Contagion on Economic Decisions Under Risk

“…Most studies investigating the effect of induced moods on risk taking have not included participants’ personality traits in their analysis. We consider this an important limitation since personality factors, such as SS and emotional contagion, can have an interaction with framing ( Gabriel and Williamson, 2010 ) and mood ( Kuang et al, 2019 ) in the context of risk taking. Such moderation effects of personality traits have been investigated in the past (see Kuvaas and Kaufmann, 2003 ; Garon and Moore, 2007 ; Sundqvist and Wennberg, 2014 ; Charpentier et al, 2016 ; Schulreich et al, 2016 , 2020 ).…”