Skip to main content

Biased or Unbiased Risk Tolerance in Financial Decision Making

  • Chapter
New Issues in Financial and Credit Markets

Abstract

This paper focuses on the risk tolerance which clearly influences financial decision making. We investigated the emotional side of risk-taking behaviour, identifying subjective obstacles to the individual ability taking conscious investment and debt decisions. We used an empirical cross-disciplinary approach, combining financial competences with others from psychology and affective neuroscience. We present descriptive results from a sample of 176 individuals with different levels of financial education/competence. Some of them are traders who attended the 2008-Borsa Italiana-Trading-Expo, and some others are bank customers and bankers.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 135.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Alderfer CP and Bierman H. (1970). Choices with risk: Beyond the mean and variance. Journal of Business 43 (3), 341–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baker HK, Hargrove MB and Haslem JA. (1977). An empirical analysis of the risk-return preferences of individual investors. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 12 (3), 377–389.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bechara A, Tranel D, Damasio H and Damasio AR. (1996). Failure to respond autonomically to anticipated future outcomes following damage to prefrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex 6, 215–225.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blaylock BK. (1985). Risk perception: Evidence of an interactive process. Journal of Business Research 13 (3), 207–221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bowman CH and Turnbull OH. (2003). Real versus facsimile reinforcers on the Iowa Gambling Task. Brain and Cognition 53, 207–210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Corter JE and Chen Y. (2005). Do investment risk tolerance attitudes predict portfolio risk?. Journal of Business and Psychology 20 (3), 369–381.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Damasio AR. (1994). Descartes Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Avon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Franken IH, van Strien JW, Nijs I and Muris P. (2008). Impulsivity is associated with behavioral decision-making deficits. Psychiatry Research 158 (2), 155–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grable JE. (2000). Financial risk tolerance and additional factors that affect risk taking in everyday money matters. Journal of Business and Psychology 14, 625–630.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grable JE and Joo S. (1997). Determinants of risk preference: implication for the family and consumer science professionals. Family Economics Resource Management Biennial 2, 19–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grable J and Joo S. (2000). A cross-disciplinary examination of financial risk tolerance. Consumer Interests Annual 46, 151–157.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grable J and Lytton RH. (1998). Investor risk tolerance: testing the efficacy of demographics as differentiating and classifying factors. Financial Counseling and Planning 9, 61–73.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grable JE and Lytton RH. (1999). Assessing financial risk tolerance: Do demographic, socioeconomic, and attitudinal factors work? Journal of FRHD/FERM Divisions of AAFCS 3, 1–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hallahan T, Faff R and McKenzie M. (2003). An explanatory investigation of the relation between risk tolerance scores and demographic characteristics. Journal of Multinational Financial Management 13, 483–502.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lo A and Repin D. (2002). The psychophysiology of real-time financial risk processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14, 323–339.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lo AW, Repin D and Steenbarger BN. (2005). Fear and greed in financial markets: a clinical study of day-traders. The American Economic Review 95 (2), 352–359.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McInish TH. (1982). Individual investors and risk-taking. Journal of Economic Psychology 2 (2), 125–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morin RA and Suarez AF. (1983). Risk aversion revisited. Journal of Finance 38, 1201–1216.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olsen RA. (2001). Behavioral finance as science: Implications from the research of Paul Slovic. The Journal of Behavioral Finance 2 (3), 157–159.

    Google Scholar 

  • Palsson AM. (1996). Does the degree of relative risk aversion vary with household characteristics?. Journal of Economic Psychology 17, 771–787.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steenbarger B. (2002). The Psychology of Trading: Tools and Techniques for Minding the Markets. Hoboken, New Jork: John Wiley & Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Viswanath B, Janardhan Reddy YC, Kumar KJ, Kandavel T and Chandrashekar CR. (2009). Cognitive endophenotypes in OCD: a study of unaffected siblings of probands with familial OCD. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry 33 (4), 610–615.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wallach MM and Kogan N. (1961). Aspects of judgment and decision making: interrelationships and changes with age. Behavioral Science 6, 23–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang H and Hanna S. (1997). ‘Does risk tolerance decrease with age?’ Financial Counselling and Planning 8, 27–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber EU, Blais A and Betz NE. (2002). A domain-specific risk-attitude scale: Measuring risk perceptions and risk behaviours. Journal of Behavioural Decision Making 15, 263–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zuckerman M. (1994). Behavioural Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking. University Press Cambridge: Cambridge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Copyright information

© 2010 Caterina Lucarelli and Gianni Brighetti

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Lucarelli, C., Brighetti, G. (2010). Biased or Unbiased Risk Tolerance in Financial Decision Making. In: Fiordelisi, F., Molyneux, P., Previati, D. (eds) New Issues in Financial and Credit Markets. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Banking and Financial Institutions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230302181_15

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics