A brief study on risk taking personality attributes

Risk Taking:

Contemporary theorists stress the role of personality traits in differentiating between people who love taking risks and those who are risk averse. Personality traits are underlying characteristics of an individual that are relatively stable over time, and explain regularities in people's behaviors risk taking is also a willingness to take chance to make any decision by an individual. It basically depends on motivation that is if the person is highly motivated he takes more risky decisions and if the person is less motivated then le is likely to take less risky decisions. Some people are motivated more by fear whereas some people are motivated more by pleasure.

So how do personality traits help us to understand risk taking behavior? Basically we can examine whether these dimensions of personality help us to predict risk taking behaviors, and if so construct a psychological profile of risk taking. A large body of research suggests that risk takers tend to be higher in the narrow "Sensation Seeking" trait, a small element of the broader Psychoticism vs. Humaneness trait. Marvin Zuckerman initially developed the theory of Sensation Seeking in the 1950s following a series of sensory deprivation experiments. He began to suspect that the people who volunteered for these experiments might share a similar set of personality characteristics. These individuals appeared to be especially venturesome and inquisitive, eager to have new and exciting experiences even if they did contain a degree of social or physical risk. A large number of studies have shown that people who engage in a range of high risk behaviors tend to be high Sensation Seekers. Studies involving identical twins that are reared apart suggest that a large proportion of Sensation Seeking is genetically determined (approximately 60%), and exciting new studies have begun to identify the specific genes that regulate this need. On average men tend to be higher in Sensation Seeking than women, and Sensation Seeking also tends to decline with age. This goes some way to explain why many people who take potentially fatal risks are young men. However it should be remembered that many women are high Sensation Seekers, and an increasing number of women participate in high risk sports and take health risks such as smoking and binge drinking.

What effect does positive and negative feedback about past risk taking have on the future risk taking of decision makers? The results of an experimental study show that subjects who are led to believe they are very competent at decision making see more opportunities in a risky choice and take more risks. Those who are led to believe they are not very competent see more threats and take fewer risks. Hence risk can be categorized into two that is :

a) Higher Risk Taking

b) Lower Risk Taking

Differences between Higher risk taking (HRT) and Lower risk taking (LRT):

Higher Risk Taking	Lower Risk TakingS
Higher risk taking person are willing to take more chance.	Lower risk taking person are willing to take less chance
Higher risk taking person use less information and usually take rapid decision.	Lower risk taking person acquire more information and make less risky decision.
Higher risk taking person exhibits better performance on job which require rapid decision.	Lower risk taking person are much more involve in job which require less rapid decision.