BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Decision making under uncertainty: the relation between economic preferences and psychological personality traits

    Schröder, David and Gilboa Freedman, Gail (2020) Decision making under uncertainty: the relation between economic preferences and psychological personality traits. Theory and Decision 89 , pp. 61-83. ISSN 0040-5833.

    [img] Text
    30408.pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript
    Restricted to Repository staff only

    Download (136kB) | Request a copy

    Abstract

    Both economists and psychologists are interested in understanding decision making under uncertainty. Yet, they rely on different concepts to analyse human behaviour: Economists use economic preference parameters rooted in utility theory, while psy- chologists use personality traits to describe responses to uncertain situations. Using a large sample of university students, this study examines and contrasts 5 economic preference parameters and 6 psychological personality traits that are commonly used to study individuals' attitudes towards uncertainty. A novelty of this paper is to include both the economic concept of ambiguity aversion as well as the personality trait of ambiguity intolerance. We find that standard economic preference measures based on incentivized choice tasks seem to capture rather different characteristics than psychological personality traits. In contrast, economic preference measures obtained from self-assessment questions appear more related to personality traits, especially ambiguity intolerance.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Additional Information: The final publication is available at Springer via the link above.
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): decision making, uncertainty, preferences, personality traits, ambiguity intolerance, ambiguity aversion, risk aversion
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School
    Depositing User: David Schroeder
    Date Deposited: 02 Jan 2020 11:52
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:56
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/30408

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    1Download
    6 month trend
    350Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item
    Edit/View Item