The Impact Of Real And Virtual Monetary Rewards On The Decision-making Behavior Of People With Different Risk Preferences In Gain-loss Situation

People are influenced by various factors when making decisions in risky scenarios.Through three behavioral experiments,which recruited college students as participants,this dissertation examined the influence of real or hypothetical monetary rewards on decision-making of individuals with different risk preferences under gain and loss contexts.All experiments used the probabilistic gambling task(cold/hot version)as paradigm.The results of Experiment 1 showed that participants who received real monetary reward made fewer risky choices compared to those who received hypothetical monetary reward,and participants with high risk preference made more risky choices compared to those with low risk preference.In Experiment 2,the results revealed that participants who received real monetary reward made less risky choices in the gain situation and more in the loss situation,while there was no significant difference of risky decision-makings between gain and loss situations in the hypothetical monetary reward condition.In the loss situation,participants with high risk preferences made more risky choices in the hypothetical monetary reward condition than real,while participants with low risk preferences showed the opposite.In Experiment 3,the results of the hot paradigm were same with the cold paradigm,that participants who received real monetary reward made less risky choices compared to those who received hypothetical monetary reward.Risk preference traits and gain/loss situations did not cause different effects.Participants with high risk preferences made more risky choices than those with low risk preferences after positive feedback,while there were no significant different after negative feedback.Participants with high risk preferences made less risky choices after negative feedback than positive feedback.Through the modified version of the probabilistic gambling task,this dissertation re-examined the influence of monetary reward types on risky decision-making,which was controversial in past studies,and took risk preference traits and gain/loss situations as research variables to research.The findings not only help to better design risky decision-making tasks and expand the content of risky decision-making research,but also can be combined with other economic psychology theories to reasonably apply in finance,consumption and other fields,which can reduce irrational risky decision-making behaviors and the occurrence of economic risky events.