![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Risk3.jpg\" "\\"risk-taking\\"")
It is intuitive that most people would be less likely to take risks after an unexpected loss. What happens after a surprising win?<\/p>\n
It turns out that the very same trend applies, according to Case Western Reserve University psychologist Heath Demaree. In other words, it\u2019s not whether you win or lose, but whether the outcome is expected<\/strong>. People appear to decrease their risk-taking levels after experiencing any surprising outcome \u2013 even positive ones.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSurprising events are known to cause animals to stop, freeze, orient to the surprising stimulus and update their schemas of how the world works,\u201d Demaree, professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve, said. \u201cOur recent research suggests that surprising events also cause people to temporarily reduce risk-taking.\u201d<\/p>\n The researcher is the lead author of the article \u201cRisk Dishabituation: In Repeated Gambling, Risk Is Reduced Following Low-Probability \u2018Surprising\u2019 Events (Win or Lose),\u201d which has been published in the American Psychological Association journal, Emotion<\/em>.<\/p>\n Demaree, who studies emotions and how they impact decision-making, set out to further understand how a person\u2019s current emotional state predicts risk-taking behavior<\/strong>. Past research has revealed that positive and negative emotional states generally decrease and increase risk-taking, respectively.<\/p>\n With a fictitious bankroll of $50, participants played one or two of three types of computerized slot games 25 times each. Each computerized game produced wins at different probabilities \u2013 13% (with big jackpots), 50% (essentially, a coin flip), and 87% (with very small jackpots). Although no participants gambled with real money, motivation to win was present. For every dollar in the individual\u2019s account at the end of playing the 25 games, the person received one ticket toward a $50 raffle.<\/p>\n \u201cEach game was set to be a \u2018fair\u2019 game,\u201d said Demaree. \u201cThat is, if you played for a long period of time, you should break even on average.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers had 59 participants play the high-risk computerized gambling game (13 percent) and surprised the participants with some big wins. A separate group of 85 participants played both the 50 percent and 85 percent win yield. The last group, which expected to mostly win, was given some unexpected losses. After playing each game, students answered a questionnaire about emotions, moods and risk taking. In addition to a person\u2019s self-reported emotional valence predicting risk-taking level, a just-experienced surprising event appeared to temporarily produce risk aversion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Collaborators on the study were: Kevin J. Burns, The MITRE Corporation; Edward Agarwala and Michael DeDonno, Case Western Reserve University; and D. Erik Everhart, East Carolina University.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Case Western Reserve University press release via ScienceDaily: It is intuitive that most people would be less likely to take risks after an unexpected loss. What happens after… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[127,28,12,236],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4455"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4457,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455\/revisions\/4457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}