Impact of aspirations on risk judgment and on risky choices

Abstract

The presented experiments are aimed at determining: (1) whether risk perception and risk acceptance are two distinct psychological processes and (2) how aspirations affect each process. It has been tested whether risk is independent of and preferences are depend on aspirations. In Experiment 1 72 employees of a high-tech company were presented with pairs of risky projects. The aspiration level was defi ned as the target return on the project and was set through an explicit instruction. In Experiment 2 93 bridge players were presented with pairs of contracts – one a sure thing and the other a risky one. The aspiration level was related