Risk‐Taking Tendencies in Prisoners and Nonprisoners: Does Gender Matter?

Several investigations have found that prisoners are more likely than nonprisoners to engage in risky behavior, which may contribute to their propensity to commit criminal offenses. However, this research has been limited by an almost exclusive focus on male samples. Given the established link between risk taking and gender, it is thus unclear how findings on the risk‐taking propensities of prisoners also hold in women. The present study uses both a self‐report questionnaire (Domain‐Specific Risk Taking scale, DOSPERT) and a behavioral task (Balloon Analogue Risk Task, BART) to investigate risk‐taking tendencies in a Chinese prisoner group and a nonprisoner control group with balanced gender proportions. Across both genders, prisoners both indicated a higher risk‐taking tendency on the DOSPERT and showed more risk‐taking behavior on the BART than did nonprisoners. Importantly, the differences were considerably more pronounced in women than in men. Relative to nonprisoners, gender differences in risk taking were substantially smaller, or even reversed, in prisoners. Computational modeling of respondents' behavior in the BART revealed that the prisoners had higher reward sensitivity and lower response consistency than the nonprisoners; these differences were again more pronounced among women. Our results suggest that previous studies based primarily on male prisoners may have underestimated differences in risk taking between prisoners and nonprisoners, and that female prisoners may represent an even more extreme subpopulation than male prisoners. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How much risk can you stomach? Individual differences in the tolerance of perceived risk across gender and risk domain

Research within the psychological risk–return framework, namely, using the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking scale, has led to a conclusion that risk attitude—measured as an individual's sensitivity to the risk they perceive—is stable across people (e.g., gender) and domains (e.g., recreational, social, financial, & health). Risk taking differences across gender and domain have been interpreted in terms of differences in the magnitude of risk perceived (and expected benefit). Yet the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking scale items, contrived by researchers rather than decision makers themselves, may have failed to detect differences in perceived risk attitude by failing to adequately represent all combinations of risks and benefits across gender and domains. In Study 1, participants generated their own examples of activities, which we selected among in Studies 2 and 3 to construct a new scale representing various levels of perceived risk and expected benefit. Our findings reveal that women are more sensitive than men to risk they perceive (i.e., are less tolerant of risk) in the recreational, social, and financial domains but not in the health domain. Risk attitude also differed across domains, with participants tolerating more risk in some domains than in others. We conclude that gender and domain differences in risk taking stem partly from gender and domain differences in people's sensitivity to perceived risks. Our findings have theoretical implications for the psychological risk–return framework and bridge with other theoretical approaches, such as the expected utility framework. Our studies also provide a new scale for assessing differences in attitudes toward risk that overcomes shortcomings of existing scales.     

健康焦虑的产生、分型及其治理

健康焦虑来源于健康的不确定性风险和风险感知。伴随风险社会中健康不确定性风险的日渐增多,公众对健康风险的感知越来越强,健康焦虑普遍存在于各类群体。基于健康焦虑产生的不确定性风险来源发现,健康焦虑可以分为由生活和劳动环境变化产生的环境型健康焦虑,由外部社会发展变化产生的结构型健康焦虑,突发事件导致的应激型健康焦虑,身体机能变化而来的生理型健康焦虑。以健康优先为原则推动个体和社会发展,降低环境健康风险,提升公众健康素养是缓解健康焦虑的应对之策。

     

我国民众对SARS信息的风险认知及心理行为

采用分层抽样的调查方法,对全国17个城市的4231名市民进行了SARS疫情中风险认知特征和心理行为的研究。结果发现：（1）负性信息,包括患病信息和与自身关系密切的信息,更易引起民众的高风险认知; 正性信息,包括治愈信息和政府防范措施的信息,能降低个体风险认知水平。（2）我国民众5月中旬风险认知因素空间位置分析结果表明, SARS病因处于不熟悉和难以控制一端,“愈后对身体的影响和有无传染性”处于不熟悉一端,这是引起民众风险意识的主要因素。（3）结构方程分析结果表明,SARS疫情信息是通过风险认知对个体的应对行为、心理健康产生影响的, 并初步验证了风险评估、心理紧张度、应对行为和心理健康等指标对于危机事件中民众心理行为的预测作用     

儿童冒险行为的影响因素

冒险行为是个体面对风险情境时的行为意愿,是一种特殊类型的决策。儿童的冒险行为受到个体、家庭、社会-情境三个方面的影响。个体因素方面,儿童的性别和年龄会影响他们对风险的知觉、对受伤风险的估计和对行为后果的归因;认知决策能力和预期情绪体验则影响到儿童对风险情境的判断。家庭因素方面,父母和兄姐是影响儿童冒险行为的重要他人,父母的态度和反应会直接影响儿童的冒险行为,而兄姐的言语和行为会改变他们的风险决策。从社会-情境的角度来看,风险情境会对儿童的冒险决策带来压力,有同伴在场时会促使儿童更倾向于参与冒险。综合分析并探讨冒险行为的各个影响因素及其产生机制,对提出合理干预措施,减少儿童因冒险行为而导致的意外伤害具有重要意义。     

Social-Cognitive Factors in Changing Health-Related Behaviors

Changing health-related behaviors requires two separate processes that involve motivation and volition, respectively. First, an intention to change is developed, in part on the basis of self-beliefs. Second, the change must be planned, initiated, and maintained, and relapses must be managed; self-regulation plays a critical role in these processes. Social-cognition models of health behavior change address these two processes. One such model, the health action process approach, is explicitly based on the assumption that two distinct phases need to be studied longitudinally, one phase that leads to a behavioral intention and another that leads to the actual behavior. Particular social-cognitive variables may play different roles in the two stages; perceived self-efficacy is the only predictor that seems to be equally important in the two phases.     

What if I am the one? Measuring individual differences in emotional sensitivity to probability and emotional reactivity to possibility

Current theories of risk perception point to the powerful role of emotion and the neglect of probabilistic information in the face of risk, but these tendencies differ across individuals. We propose a method for measuring individuals' emotional sensitivity to probability to assess how feelings about probabilities, rather than the probabilities themselves, influence decisions. Participants gave affective ratings (worry or excitement) to 14 risky events, each with a specified probability ranging from 1 in 10 to 1 in 10,000,000. For each participant, we regressed these emotional responses against item probabilities, estimating a slope (the degree to which emotional responses change with probability) and an intercept (the emotional reaction to an event with a fixed probability). These two parameters were treated as individual difference scores and included in models predicting reactions to several health risk scenarios. Both emotional sensitivity to probability (slope) and emotional reactivity to possibility (intercept) significantly predicted responses to these scenarios, above and beyond the predictive power of other well‐established individual difference measures.     

Changes at work and employee reactions: organizational elements, job insecurity, and short-term stress as predictors for employee health and safety

The objective was to identify focus areas for possible reduction of job insecurity and its outcomes. A model was specified and tested as a prediction model for health and safety. First, a parsimonious model was specified. The model consisted of perceived job insecurity (as a stressor), organizational factors (information quality, leadership style, work task administration), and short-term stress reactions (job dissatisfaction, reduced work motivation). Second, the model was tested as a prediction model in three separate path analyses, in order to examine the model's contribution in explaining (1) physical health complaints, (2) mental health complaints, and (3) risk taking behavior. A quota sample of Norwegian employees ( N = 1,002) was obtained by means of a self-completion questionnaire survey. The results of the structural equation modeling (path analyses) supported the hypothesized model. Mental health complaints and employee risk taking behavior were significantly predicted (not physical health complaints).     

风险认知的结构,因素及其研究方法

风险认知是心理学的热门研究领域之一。风险认知是人们对影响日常生活和工作的各种因素的心理感受和认识,是测量公众心理恐慌的指标。风险认知的研究方法包括:风险估计,风险认知的测量;风险认知结构具有复杂性。风险认知的影响因素有:个体因素,期望水平,风险沟通,风险的可控程度,风险的性质,知识结构,成就动机,事件风险度。     

一般社会情境中风险认知的实验研究

风险认知是一个新的研究领域,随着经济的发展应愈来愈受到重视。本研究在一般社会情境下,讨论了对46个风险因素的风险程度及风险特征的知觉;个性特征与风险认知的关系;群体的风险认知类型特征,以及各样本间的比较分析。研究结论提供了公众风险认知结构的初步轮廓。