IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/5q4g7_v1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economic decisions with ambiguous outcome magnitudes vary with low and high stakes but not trait anxiety or depression

Author

Listed:
  • Zbozinek, Tomislav Damir

    (University of California, Los Angeles)

  • Charpentier, Caroline J
  • Qi, Song
  • mobbs, dean

Abstract

Most of life’s decisions involve risk and uncertainty regarding whether reward or loss will follow. Decision makers often face uncertainty not only about the likelihood of outcomes (what are the chances that I will get a raise if I ask my supervisor? What are the chances that my supervisor will be upset with me for asking?) but also the magnitude of outcomes (if I do get a raise, how large will it be? If my supervisor gets upset, how bad will the consequences be for me?). Only a few studies have investigated economic decision making with ambiguous likelihoods, and even fewer have investigated ambiguous outcome magnitudes. In the present report, we investigated the effects of ambiguous outcome magnitude, risk, and gains/losses in an economic decision-making task with low stakes (Study 1; \$3.60-\$5.70; N = 367) and high stakes (Study 2; \$6-\$48; N = 210) using a within-subjects design. We conducted computational modeling to determine individuals’ preferences/aversions for ambiguous outcome magnitudes, risk, and gains/losses. We additionally investigated the association between trait anxiety and trait depression and decision-making parameters. Our results show that increasing stakes increased ambiguous gain aversion and unambiguous risk aversion but increased ambiguous sure loss preference; participants also became more averse to ambiguous sure gains relative to unambiguous risky gains. There were no significant effects of trait anxiety or trait depression on economic decision making. Our results suggest that as stakes increase, people tend to avoid uncertainty in the gain domain (especially ambiguous gains) but prefer ambiguous vs unambiguous sure losses.

Suggested Citation

  • Zbozinek, Tomislav Damir & Charpentier, Caroline J & Qi, Song & mobbs, dean, 2021. "Economic decisions with ambiguous outcome magnitudes vary with low and high stakes but not trait anxiety or depression," OSF Preprints 5q4g7_v1, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:5q4g7_v1
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/5q4g7_v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/6067875e51f7ae009bf51ff8/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/5q4g7_v1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raghunathan, Rajagopal & Pham, Michel Tuan, 1999. "All Negative Moods Are Not Equal: Motivational Influences of Anxiety and Sadness on Decision Making, , , , ," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 56-77, July.
    2. Ofra Amir & David G Rand & Ya'akov Kobi Gal, 2012. "Economic Games on the Internet: The Effect of $1 Stakes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(2), pages 1-4, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dalton, Patricio S. & Nhung, Nguyen & Rüschenpöhler, Julius, 2020. "Worries of the poor: The impact of financial burden on the risk attitudes of micro-entrepreneurs," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    2. DeMarree, Kenneth G. & Briñol, Pablo & Petty, Richard E., 2014. "The effects of power on prosocial outcomes: A self-validation analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 20-30.
    3. Tuan Pham, Michel & Meyvis, Tom & Zhou, Rongrong, 2001. "Beyond the Obvious: Chronic Vividness of Imagery and the Use of Information in Decision Making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 226-253, March.
    4. Kalamas, Maria & Laroche, Michel & Makdessian, Lucy, 2008. "Reaching the boiling point: Consumers' negative affective reactions to firm-attributed service failures," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(8), pages 813-824, August.
    5. Mengel, F. & Tsakas, E. & Vostroknutov, A., 2011. "Decision making with imperfect knowledge of the state space," Research Memorandum 013, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).
    6. Steven J. Stanton & Crystal Reeck & Scott A. Huettel & Kevin S. LaBar, 2014. "Effects of induced moods on economic choices," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 9(2), pages 167-175, March.
    7. Adams, Leen & Faseur, Tineke & Geuens, Maggie, 2010. "The Influence of the Self-Regulatory Focus on the Effectiveness of Stop-Smoking Campaigns for Young Smokers," Working Papers 2010/38, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    8. Giorgia Ponsi & Maria Serena Panasiti & Salvatore Maria Aglioti & Marco Tullio Liuzza, 2017. "Right-wing authoritarianism and stereotype-driven expectations interact in shaping intergroup trust in one-shot vs multiple-round social interactions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(12), pages 1-23, December.
    9. Larney, Andrea & Rotella, Amanda & Barclay, Pat, 2019. "Stake size effects in ultimatum game and dictator game offers: A meta-analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 61-72.
    10. Yochi Cohen-Charash & Charles A Scherbaum & John D Kammeyer-Mueller & Barry M Staw, 2013. "Mood and the Market: Can Press Reports of Investors' Mood Predict Stock Prices?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-15, August.
    11. Prissé, Benjamin & Jorrat, Diego, 2022. "Lab vs online experiments: No differences," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    12. Tuncel, Ece & Kong, Dejun Tony & McLean Parks, Judi & van Kleef, Gerben A., 2020. "Face threat sensitivity in distributive negotiations: Effects on negotiator self-esteem and demands," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 255-273.
    13. Jérôme Hergueux & Nicolas Jacquemet, 2015. "Social preferences in the online laboratory: a randomized experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(2), pages 251-283, June.
    14. Martin G. Kocher, 2015. "How Trust in Social Dilemmas Evolves with Age," CESifo Working Paper Series 5447, CESifo.
    15. Aydinli, Aylin & Gu, Yangjie & Pham, Michel Tuan, 2017. "An experience-utility explanation of the preference for larger assortments," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 746-760.
    16. Eesha Sharma & Punam A. Keller, 2017. "A Penny Saved Is Not a Penny Earned: When Decisions to Earn and Save Compete for Consumer Resources," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 64-77.
    17. Yarrow Dunham & Antonio A. Arechar & David G. Rand, 2019. "From foe to friend and back again: The temporal dynamics of intra-party bias in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(3), pages 373-380, May.
    18. Brooks, Alison Wood & Schroeder, Juliana & Risen, Jane L. & Gino, Francesca & Galinsky, Adam D. & Norton, Michael I. & Schweitzer, Maurice E., 2016. "Don’t stop believing: Rituals improve performance by decreasing anxiety," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 71-85.
    19. Mujcic, Redzo & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2022. "How Do Humans Respond to Huge Financial Losses?," IZA Discussion Papers 15536, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Valerio Capraro & David G. Rand, 2018. "Do the Right Thing: Experimental evidence that preferences for moral behavior, rather than equity or efficiency per se, drive human prosociality," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 13(1), pages 99-111, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:5q4g7_v1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.