AbstractAre highly intelligent people less risk averse? Over the last two decades scholars have argued the existence of a negative relationship between cognitive ability and risk aversion. Although numerous studies support this, the link between cognitive ability and risk aversion has not been found consistently. To shed new light on this topic, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted. A total of 97 studies were identified and included for meta-analysis in the domain of gains (N=90, 723), 41 in the mixed domain (N=50, 936), and 12 in the domain of losses (N=4, 544). Results indicate that there exists a weak, but significant negative relationship between cognitive ability and risk aversion in the domain of gains. However, no relationship was observed in the mixed domain or in the domain of losses. Several meta-regressions were performed to investigate the influence of moderator variables. None of the moderator variables were found to consistently influence the relationship between cognitive ability and risk aversion across the domain of gains, mixed and losses. Moreover, no significant difference was observed between males and females across all three domains. In conclusion, this systematic review and meta-analysis provides new evidence that the relationship between cognitive ability and risk aversion is domain specific and not as strong as suggested by some previous studies.

ABSTRACT Given the link between vaccine hesitancy and vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, it is critical to examine the cognitive processes that contribute to the development of vaccine hesitancy, especially among parents of adolescents. We conducted a secondary analysis of baseline data from a two-phase randomized trial on human papillomavirus to investigate how vaccine hesitancy and intent to vaccinate are associated with six decision-making factors: base rate neglect, conjunction fallacy, sunk cost bias, present bias, risk aversion, and information avoidance. We recruited 1,413 adults residing in the United States with at least one daughter aged 9–17 years old through an online survey on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Vaccine hesitancy, intent to vaccinate, and susceptibility to cognitive biases was measured through a series of brief questionnaires. 1,400 participants were in the final analyzed sample. Most participants were white (74.1%), female (71.6%), married (75.3%), and had a college or graduate/professional education (88.8%). Conjunction fallacy, sunk cost bias, information avoidance, and present bias may be associated with vaccine hesitancy. Intent to vaccinate may be associated with information avoidance. These results suggest that cognitive biases play a role in developing parental vaccine hesitancy and vaccine-related behavior.

Primates' decision-making in economic contexts follows distinctive patterns, as initially described by Prospect Theory. Social animals, such as monkeys, live in hierarchically structured groups where individual status may influence cognitive processes, including economic decisions. We leveraged a unique dataset from a semi-free ranging macaques' group, which had continuous access to gambling tasks over several years, yielding hundreds of thousands of trials and longitudinal assessments of social hierarchy. Our findings reveal a dynamic relationship between social hierarchy and decision parameters: middle-ranking individuals displayed reduced risk aversion for potential gains but not losses. Longitudinal analyses suggested that changes in social rank were followed by corresponding shifts in risk attitudes, implying that social position, rather than inherent traits, influences decision-making patterns. While sex had no significant impact, age was primarily associated with variations in loss aversion. These results underscore the flexibility and adaptive nature of primates' cognitive biases and provide key insights into how social structures influence risk behavior, with potential implications for understanding decision-making processes in other social species, including humans.

The purpose was to understand the effects of loss aversion and framing on situation awareness (SA) and decision making for a dynamic missile simulation task. Whereas framing has been shown in numerous experiments that were based on the original paradigm, we hypothesized that the loss aversion effects were more general and would extend to conditions in which sure gains were not possible and would affect SA as well as decision making. Forty-eight students participated in a dynamic simulation in which operators had to decide which cities to defend and to answer SA probes while viewing 2-min scenarios wherein probabilities were assigned to a number of target cities as the missile attack unfolded. The authors varied frame in terms of lives lost or survived for a chosen allocation scheme and varied presentation mode in terms of either expected value or individual risk indices (probabilities and lives) as part of the graphic displays. There were significant effects on missile conservation decisions, coverage of small cities, and SA. The results supported theories positing more general effects of loss aversion related to negative affect. Guidelines related to presenting gain or loss information via graphic displays were suggested.

of cognitive bias which is observed for example in the overconfidence effect. The theory describes the decision processes in two stages: During an initial Prospect theory is a theory of behavioral economics, judgment and decision making that was developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979. The theory was cited in the decision to award Kahneman the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. Based on results from controlled studies, it describes how individuals assess their loss and gain perspectives in an asymmetric manner (see loss aversion). When faced with a risky choice leading to gains, agents are risk averse, preferring a certain outcome with a lower expected utility (i.e., the value function is concave). In the example, agents will choose the certain $450 even though the expected utility of the risky gain is higher. When faced with a risky choice leading to losses, agents are risk seeking, preferring the outcome that has a lower expected utility but the potential to avoid losses (i.e., the value function is convex). Agents will choose the 50% chance of losing $1100 even though the expected utility is lower, due to the chance that they lose nothing at all. These two examples are thus in contradiction with the theory of expected utility, which leads only to choices which maximize utility. Also, the concavity of gains and the convexity of losses implies diminishing marginal utility with increasing gains or losses. In other words, someone who has more money has a lower desire for a fixed amount of gain (and lower aversion to a fixed amount of loss) than someone who has less money. The theory continues with a second concept, based on the observation that people attribute excessive weight to events with low probability and insufficient weight to events with high probability. For example, individuals may unconsciously treat an outcome with a probability of 99% as if its probability were 95%, and an outcome with probability of 1% as if it had a probability of 5%. Under- and over-weighting of probabilities is importantly distinct from under- and over-estimating probabilities, a different type of cognitive bias which is observed for example in the overconfidence effect.