Risk Taking

James P. Byrnes

When people take risks, they engage in behaviors that could lead to negative consequences such as physical injury, social rejection, legal troubles, or financial losses. Behaviors that are more likely to lead to such outcomes are considered riskier than behaviors that are less likely to lead to such outcomes. Regardless of the degree of risk involved, however, behaviors of any type can lead to both positive and negative consequences. People who take risks think about consequences in one of two ways. The first way involves an awareness that a behavior such as gambling could lead to both positive and negative consequences (e.g., their winnings could increase further or they could lose all of their money), but people engage in the behavior anyway because they assume that the positive consequences are more likely than the negative consequences. In contrast, people who think about consequences in the second way do not seem ...

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