The Effects Of Esteem And Decision Makers' Roles On Risk Preference In Different Contexts

Decision-making is an indispensable behavior in people's daily life, as an important category of decision-making risk decision attracts a lot of attention from researchers both in the theoretical research and empirical research of psychology. Self-esteem as an important personality variable which has a vital influence on individual risk decision-making and it has always been the focus of studies We have to admit that everyone is a member of society which means everybody will always has an inevitable relationship with others. We have to admit that except making decision for ourselves, people always have been asked to make decisions for others, then as asked to make decisions for different person, does those factors which affect individual's consider of decision are all the same or not? Based on the predecessors' researches, this study from the perspective of social value theory, combined with the “two factors” structure of self-esteem, in order to probes into the effect of esteem and decision makers' roles on risk preference in different contexts.This study consists of two experiments. In Experiment 1, we studied how situation type, self-esteem and different role of decision maker affected individual's risk preference. Experiment 1 was a 2(situation type: safety, relationships) × 2(self-esteem level: high, low) ×3(decision-makers role: for themselves, for others, expectations for others) mix experimental design. Situation type is a within-subjects variable, self-esteem and decision-makers role are between-subjects variables, risk preference score as the dependent variable. Experiment 2 which on the base of experiment 1, further divide the decision makers variable into the role of decided for “ similar others” and for “ dissimilar others”, in order to further explore the effects of decision-makers role on people's risk preference.The experimental results showed that:(1) Situation type has an effect on different decision maker's risk preference. In both security and the relationship domain, people performance difference risk preference when they decided for different person. In the security domain, people make riskier decision for themselves whereas in the relationship domain, people make riskier decision for others.(2) The level of self-esteem, situation type and the role of decision maker are work together to influence individual's risk preference. Results showed that self-other differences in decision making occur no matter of the level of self-esteem nor the situation type.(3) High self-esteem subjects always performance difference risk preference when decided for themselves and others in both situations. On the contrary, low self-esteem only showed that difference in security situation.(4) Low self-esteem performance self- others differences in both two contexts, but high self-esteem only show that difference in the context of relations.