Competitive disadvantage facilitates risk taking

Risk-sensitivity theory predicts that organisms are more likely to take risks when they are unlikely to achieve their goals through safer, low-risk means. Those who are competitively disadvantaged are less likely to succeed in social competition and should consequently show elevated risk taking. We experimentally tested this hypothesis by exposing participants to cues of relative competitive disadvantage or relative competitive advantage via feedback from a purported reaction time based intelligence test. Participants then made a number of high-risk or low-risk economic decisions (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 built on this design by either maintaining or ameliorating cues of relative competitive (dis)advantage. Results indicate that cues of relative competitive disadvantage leads to increased risk taking, and that risk taking can be reduced when cues of disadvantage are ameliorated. Since risk taking tends to generalize across domains, these results can potentially apply to a number of problematic risky behaviors.