Feedback-induced dispositional changes in risk preferences

Abstract Contrary to the normative decision-making standpoint, empirical studies have repeatedly reported that risk preferences are affected by the disclosure of choice outcomes (feedback). Although no consensus has yet emerged regarding the properties and mechanisms of this effect, a widespread and intuitive hypothesis is that repeated feedback affects risk preferences by means of learning, which alters the representation of subjective probabilities. Here, we ran a series of seven experiments, tailored to decipher the effects of feedback on risk preferences. Our results indicate that the presence of feedback consistently increases risk-taking, even when the risky option is less advantageous. Crucially, risk-taking increases immediately after the instructions, before participants experience any feedback and trial-by-trial analysis directly falsified learning accounts. These results challenge the learning account in favor of a dispositional effect, induced by the anticipation of feedback information. Epistemic curiosity and regret avoidance may drive this effect in partial and complete feedback conditions.