Introduction

We are often faced with choices that involve some risk; you don’t always know if they will have a positive or negative outcome. You may have to choose between taking the highway and hitting a traffic jam, or taking the back roads and driving an extra 30 km. You may have to choose between taking a job you know you will like, or taking a chance on a higher paying job you aren’t sure you’ll like as much. Psychologists have discovered a fairly consistent pattern with how people deal with risk, but before we discuss it in detail, let’s see how you deal with risky choices in this brief experiment