Department of Psychology, University of Bamberg, 96045, Bamberg, Germany.
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Duisburg-Essen, 47057, Duisburg, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2024 Oct 29;14(1):25899. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-73650-y.
Some theories in economics and psychology propose that background uncertainty, which is uncertainty that is independent of a person's actual decision, can alter people's risk-taking behavior with respect to that decision. However, previous empirical research mostly relying on single experiments is inconclusive regarding the existence of this effect. Here, we systematically investigate the effect of background uncertainty on decision-making. After reviewing the literature, we argue that two types of background uncertainty should be distinguished: (a) background ambiguity, where the decision maker does not know the probability of the outcomes of the background event, and (b) background risk, where the outcome probabilities are known. We tested the hypotheses (i) that background uncertainty does affect risk-taking in the decision at hand, and (ii) the type of background uncertainty moderates that effect. In four experiments (total N =863), we induced background uncertainty (ambiguity or risk) using different methods and measured risk-taking with multiple behavioral tasks. We did not find a significant effect of background uncertainty on risk-taking behavior.
一些经济学和心理学理论提出，背景不确定性（即独立于个人实际决策的不确定性）可以改变人们在该决策上的风险承担行为。然而，以前主要依赖于单一实验的实证研究对于这种效应的存在尚无定论。在这里，我们系统地研究了背景不确定性对决策的影响。在回顾文献后，我们认为应该区分两种类型的背景不确定性：（a）背景模糊性，决策者不知道背景事件结果的概率；（b）背景风险，其中结果概率是已知的。我们检验了以下假设：（i）背景不确定性确实会影响手头决策中的风险承担，以及（ii）背景不确定性的类型会调节这种影响。在四项实验中（总计 N =863），我们使用不同的方法诱导背景不确定性（模糊性或风险），并使用多种行为任务衡量风险承担。我们没有发现背景不确定性对风险承担行为有显著影响。
