Never mind losing the pound… still got the penny! The influence of trait greed on risky decision behavior in a mixed and gain only BART

Abstract

Risk proneness and the lack of loss aversion are two different reasons to show varying degrees of risk-taking in decision situations. So far, little is known about the extent to which these two processes underly the influence of trait greed, trait anxiety, and age. The present study investigated risk- taking in decision making in these trait contexts using two variants of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) in an online study: A gain only and a mixed gambling BART. This was done to separate risk proneness from loss aversion. Individuals with high trait greed showed an increased risk decision-making behavior due to an increased risk proneness and not due to a reduced loss aversion. This is partly in contrast with previous findings in other tasks assessing risk proneness and loss aversion. These differences may be caused by the changes of perception during the gain only task. No significant effects were found for trait anxiety or age concerning risk-taking in decision-making behavior. Possible explanations for the lack of influence of these constructs are skewed distributions, omitting pathologically anxious subjects in anxiety and a restricted age range. The findings suggest that a lack of loss aversion is not a driving factor to explain elevated risk-taking in decision-making behavior in persons with high trait greed, but a higher reaction to reward in predominantly rewarding contexts. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03553-6.

A Culture of Greed: The Effect of Aggregate Greed on Bubble Formation in Experimental Asset Markets

“…Li et al (2019) found that the DGS negatively correlated with loss aversion but not with risk attitude. Rodrigues et al (2022) found that individuals with high greed showed increased risk decisionmaking in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART; Lejuez et al, 2002 ). In the finance domain, Hoyer et al (2021) tested the effects of the motive of greed on individual trading behavior in experimental assets markets and found that participants' level of greed did not influence trading activity.…”