Risk-taking Behavior Under the Effect of Emotional Stimuli Among Children and Adults

Abstract

Introduction: Risk-taking has an important role in human life, either positive or negative. Finding a method to control or drive this in a particular way can affect the health of individuals and communities by discouraging negative risks, such as reckless driving, or encouraging positive risks. It has been shown that emotion induction can enhance risk-taking behavior. Nonetheless, studies are mainly conducted on adults and a gap to focus on adolescents group as the peak age of risk-taking is required. Therefore, a new risk-taking task is introduced and development of risk-taking behavior in children is compared with a group male adults. In addition, influence of positive and negative emotional images on the risk-taking behavior is also evaluated. Methods: A total of 21 children and 20 adults participated in this experiment. Their risk taking behavior is obtained using a new version of the dice game task with emotional stimuli. Subsequently, performances of two groups before and after emotional priming are statistically compared. Results: The results showed that children have a higher tendency to choose riskier options when they are affected by positive emotion, while adults are more risk-averse after being primed by negative emotion. Conclusion: These findings can be helpful for policymakers and tutoring planners to control risk-taking behavior at different ages using the priming effect of positive and negative emotions.

Keywords

• risk-taking behavior
• emotional priming
• dual system theory
• development