Culture and Risk Taking Behaviour

It is well known that culture influences judgement and decision-making (Oyserman & Lee, 2008). Both culture orientation, a group-level concept, and self-construal, an individual-level concept, are important factors impacting... [ view full abstract ]

It is well known that culture influences judgement and decision-making (Oyserman & Lee, 2008). Both culture orientation, a group-level concept, and self-construal, an individual-level concept, are important factors impacting decision-making (Cross, 2011). Persons that belong to collectivistic cultures like China are naturally seen as more risk-averse and less adventurous than those that belong to individualistic cultures like America. Contrary to expectations, Weber and Hsee (1998) discovered that people from a collectivistic culture take more financial risks than those from an individualistic culture. The current study builds on existing research by going beyond exploring the relationship between risk taking behaviour and culture. It examines impulsivity and emotions acting as mediating mechanisms for risk taking behaviour, and whether this relationship varies across different domains of risk taking behaviour.

Participants from the UK and Malaysia were recruited via advertisements sent to university email lists to complete an online questionnaire with a reward offered in the form of course credits or entry into a prize draw. The Six-fold Scale of Self-Construal (Harb & Smith, 2008), Relational Interdependent Self Construal scale (Cross, Bacon and Morris, 2000), and the Collective Interdependent Self Construal scale (Gabriel and Gardner, 1999) were used. Impulsivity was measured using the Barratt’s Impulsivity Scale-11 (Patton, Stanford and Barratt, 1995) and the Positive And Negative Affect Scale (Watson and Clark, 1988) was used to measure emotions often identified in relation to reasoning about risk taking behaviour, including shame (Christensen et al, 2013), embarrassment (Mandel, 2003), guilt (Fiske, 2002), and pride. Risk taking behaviour was measured using the DOSPERT (Weber & Blais, 2006). An additional environmental risk taking behaviour scale was developed for this study, based on DOSPERT items, relating to a range of environmental issues including energy conservation.

It is hypothesized that individuals with a higher interdependent self-construal will display higher levels of financial, environmental and recreational risk taking behaviour, but lower levels of social, health/safety and ethical risk taking behaviour. We expect that impulsivity will act as a moderator, because of its links to a lack of consideration for consequences of actions. We also expect risk taking behaviour to be mediated by anticipated emotions, particularly shame, pride and guilt. We predict, for example, that an individual is likely to anticipate pride of their recreational risk taking behaviour (such as bungee jumping) but likely to anticipate shame and guilt in relation to environmental and ethical risk taking (such as an extra marital affair).