Risk Taking and Social Exposure

The paper examines in the laboratory how risk-taking situations are affected by the conditions of observing other’s choices (observer) and being observed by others (source). By extending Yechiam et al.’s (2008) experimental design to the domain of gains we find that observers are more probable than sources to choose risky alternatives producing rare gains than equiprobable gains. The impact of social exposure is also analyzed and interpreted in the context of personality traits to assess how heterogeneity influences risky decisions.