| Risky choice refers to a decision made by people after weighing options with multiple outcomes and known probability of occurrence(Kahneman & Tversky,1979).Previous studies have confirmed that depression,as a negative emotion,will lead individuals to pay more attention to loss information in the process of risk decision-making,but whether it will lead to individuals’ preference for risk seeking or risk avoidance has not been determined yet.In addition,the vast majority of studies on depression focus on clinically depressed patients and patients with bipolar disorder,while few studies focus on the "subthreshold" population with depression tendency but failing to meet the clinical diagnostic criteria.Therefore,this study attempts to explore the influence of depression as a negative emotion on individual risk preference in the context of gain and loss,and tries to explore the underlying mechanism.In Experiment 1,the effect of depression on risk decision-making was investigated.The results showed that there was no significant difference in the total risk rate between high and low group participants.Secondly,we investigated the effect of depression on individual risk preference in the gain and loss situations,and found that the difference between high and low groups was not significant in the gain situation,while the risk rate of high group was significantly higher than that of low group in the loss situation.The results showed that the higher the depression score,the more risk-seeking the individual would be in the loss situation.In Experiment 2,we separately examined the effect of depression on individual risk-making in the loss scenario,and further explored the underlying psychological mechanism of this effect.The results were consistent with Experiment 1.The risk-taking rate of high-group participants in the loss scenario was significantly higher than that of low-group participants.Mediation analysis found that anticipatory regret played a mediating role in the relationship between depression and risk decision making in the loss scenario.This suggests that the more depressed an individual is,the more expected regret they will experience in risky decisions,which in turn will lead them to be more inclined to risk seeking.In conclusion,through two experiments,this study found that in the loss scenario,depression had an impact on individual risk decision-making,and investigated the underlying psychological mechanism of this impact.Studies have shown that individuals with high depression scores tend to be more risk-seeking in the loss context because they experience more expected regret during the decision-making process.This study provides a new perspective for studying the influence of emotion on risk decision making. |
