This week Jiska Peper from Leiden University gives a talk in the Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Colloquium (Thursday, Dec 14).

Multifaceted risk-taking across adolescence: age versus gonadal hormones

Adolescence (marked by the onset of puberty) is an important time of change occurring between childhood and adulthood. Among others, adolescent increases in risk-taking behaviour have been observed, but due to its multifaceted nature, it is currently unclear which aspects of risk-taking tendencies change the most. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that changes in adolescent risk-taking are driven by the increased production of gonadal hormones, such as testosterone and estradiol, as both hormones are able to exert powerful and long-lasting effects on the brain. In my talk, I will present behavioural (tasks and questionnaires on risk-taking tendencies and impulsivity) and endocrinological data, obtained from a three-wave longitudinal study ‘Braintime’. In this study, we were able to acquire 670 observations (each time-point separated by two years) from participants aged 8-29 years.

We will have Martin Weber, University of Mannheim, give a talk in the Social, Economic, and Decision Psychology Colloquium (Thursday, Dec 7; title and abstract follow).

The Realization Effect for Gains and Losses – Extending Imas’ (2016) Results

There is a long-standing debate how risk attitude changes depending on previous gains and losses. For the case of previous losses, Imas (2016) finds that risk taking is influenced by the fact whether losses are realized or not. After a realized loss, investor’s risk aversion increases whereas it decreases after an unrealized loss. This effect is has been termed realization effect. In our study, we also find a realization effect in the gain domain, i.e. we show that the effect is independent of previous gains and losses. We further test the robustness of the effect and find that a physical transfer of money is a necessary condition for the realization effect.