Department of Psychology, University of Warwick.
Department of Psychology, University of Alberta.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2015 Feb;144(1):24-9. doi: 10.1037/xge0000046. Epub 2014 Dec 22.
People are often risk averse when making decisions under uncertainty. When those decisions are based on past experience, people necessarily rely on their memories. Thus, what is remembered at the time of the choice should influence risky choice. We tested this hypothesis by priming memory for past outcomes in a simple risky-choice task. In the task, people repeatedly chose between a safe option and a risky option that paid off with a larger or smaller reward with a 50/50 chance. Some trials were preceded by a priming cue that was previously paired with one of the outcomes. We found that priming cues associated with wins caused people to become risk seeking, whereas priming cues associated with relative losses had little effect. These results suggest that people can be induced to be more risk seeking through subtle reminders of previous winning experiences.
人们在面对不确定性做出决策时往往会规避风险。当这些决策基于过去的经验时，人们必然会依赖自己的记忆。因此，选择时所记住的内容应该会影响风险决策。我们通过在一个简单的风险选择任务中对过去结果的记忆进行启动来验证这个假设。在这个任务中，人们反复在一个安全选项和一个风险选项之间做出选择，风险选项的回报要么更大，要么更小，有 50/50 的机会。一些试验之前会有一个启动提示，这个提示之前与其中一个结果配对过。我们发现，与胜利相关的启动提示会促使人们变得更愿意冒险，而与相对损失相关的启动提示则几乎没有影响。这些结果表明，通过微妙地提醒人们之前的胜利经历，人们可以被诱导变得更愿意冒险。
