The role of psychological and physiological factors in decision making under risk and in a dilemma

We study the difference in the result of two different risk elicitation methods by linking estimates of risk attitudes to gender, age, personality traits, a decision in a dilemma situation, and physiological states measured by heart rate variability (HRV). Our results indicate that differences between the methods are reflected in a different effect of gender and personality traits. Furthermore, HRV is linked to risk-taking in the experiment for one of the methods, suggesting that emotionally more stressed individuals display more risk aversion. However, we cannot determine if these are significantly related to the difference on the results of the two methods. Finally, we find that risk attitudes are not predictive of the ability to decide in a dilemma, but personality traits are. There is also no apparent relationship between the physiological state during the dilemma situation and the ability to make a decision.