Risk-Taking As Designed By Lefebvre

This paper interprets the hard-to-explain discrepancies between the results of empirical research into achievement motivation (with free choice of the levels of task challenge, as in Hoppe’s experiments) and the predictions of the risk-taking model by Atkinson that is based on a combination of three variables: motives for achieving success, avoiding failure, and the probability of success. This model predicts that when the motive of success dominates the motive of failure, subjects choose tasks of an average level of difficulty, but this (and some other consequences of the model) is not confirmed by empirical data. Unlike most works that introducing additional variables into the classical Atkinson model to account for these, this paper proposes a different solution, based on the development of a model of readiness for a bipolar choice by Lefebvre. Lefebvre’s original model contains the perceived “pressure of the environment” (a1) which impels the choice of a positive pole; the image of the pressure of the environment (a2); subjective intentions (a3); and the objective readiness to make a choice (A). The variables are interconnected by an operator of material implication, A = ((a3?a2)?a1 and its continuous counterparts. Just like the classical risk-taking model by Atkinson, the model of readiness for a bipolar choice (defined here as the “reflexive model of risk-taking”) includes the three variables of the subjective probability of success, the motive of success, and the motive of avoiding failure. As a combination they are considered as a predictor of preferences for tasks of various difficulty levels. It is possible to adjust Atkinson’s model to account for experimental data without increasing the number of variables