This paper examines how observing other people’s behavior affects risk taking in repeated decision tasks. In Study 1, 100 participants performed experience-based decision tasks either alone or in pairs, with the two members being exposed to each others’ choices and outcomes. The tasks involved either equiprobable gains and losses or frequent small gains and rare large losses. The results indicated that, in both risk types, the social exposure increased the proportion of risky selection, but its effect was stronger in the rare-loss condition. In Study 2 the rare-loss task was administered to 32 study participants, with a target individual observing the choices of a paired individual. The results showed that observing others, rather than being observed, led to the pattern of increased risk taking. The findings of the two studies indicate the importance of distinguishing different types of risky situations and shed light on contradictory findings in the literature.

We compared South Koreans with Australians in order to characterize cultural differences in attitudes and choices regarding risk, at both the individual and group levels. Our results showed that Australians, when assessed individually, consistently self-reported higher preference for risk than South Koreans, regardless of gender. The data revealed that South Koreans, regardless of gender composition, were willing to take greater risks when making decisions in group decision-making situations than when they were alone. This is a different pattern from that seen in the Australian sample, in which a risky shift was noted only among males. This difference was attributed to the influence of various cultural orientations (independent vs. interdependent relationship styles). This study also provides a discussion of the implications of these results in terms of cultural differences in attitudes and decisions regarding risk.