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Researchers Suggest Risk Preference Should be Considered a Psychological Trait Like Intelligence

posted by martyb on Sunday October 08 2017, @12:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the going-out-on-a-limb dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

the researchers have focused on risk preference or aversion, and the possibility that it might be measurable and compared to others, offering a scale of sorts.

To learn more about how eager people are to engage in risky behavior, the researchers enlisted the assistance of 1500 volunteer adults to take a series of tests (39 tests in all), which together were meant to gauge a person's desire to seek out risky behavior. The team then analyzed the data and found that 61 percent of the variation in risky behavior scores could be summed up with a single component—a person's risk preference quotient, if you will. The remaining factors could all be attributed to which particular type of risk was involved. The single component, which the team dubbed as R, is general, the team notes, which suggests it can be applied multiple to[sic] risk situations along with other factors attributable to a particular type of risk.

The top level in intelligence quotient is called, "genius." Should the top level in risk quotient be called, "Hey Y'all, hold my beer?"

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 08 2017, @02:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 08 2017, @02:00PM (#578878)

    "The capacities required for the one aren't applicable to the other."

    Spacial awareness and muscle memory are both state, as is retained memory. Academics like to be silly about what constitutes "intelligence". The truth of it, is that it doesn't matter. Intelligence has little to do with happiness. The former being a metric for humanity, the latter being metrics for humans.

    In regards to the OP, this sounds like a case where a bunch of sociologists who are trying to metric things they haven't first isolated or qualified.

    When your young risk is an existential journey. Which in most cases is really just a corporate branded holiday on planet stupid. Once you've actually looked death in the eyeball a few times, risk becomes "that dumb shit I was suckered into doing in my youth". It is fortunate for many people that this is so. For if we were willing to take the risks that we were sold in our youth, in our old age, the people selling those risks might find themselves in a riskier position in life themselves. And perhaps they should.