IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v41y1997i5p611-637.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Who Takes Risks?

Author

Listed:
  • Paul A. Kowert

    (Department of International Relations, Florida International University)

  • Margaret G. Hermann

    (Mershon Center, Ohio State University)

Abstract

National leaders confront risky decisions on a regular basis. Although leaders may differ widely in their tolerance for risk, students of foreign policymaking lack compelling explanations for these differences. One of the few attempts to grapple with this problem holds that decision makers accept risks to avoid losses but refuse to take risks to make comparable gains . This tendency, embodied in prospect theory, is experimentally robust but consistently fails to predict the behavior of one third or more of the subjects. To investigate the contribution of individual differences to risk taking, the authors administered three questionnaires assessing risk propensity and two personality inventories (the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory) to 126 subjects. The results identify strong personality predictors of generalized risk taking. Contrary to prospect theory, some people were especially willing to take risks to make gains, whereas others were particularly unlikely to take risks when facing potential losses. Statistical analyses lend support to a three-stage model of risk taking. The findings suggest that if students of international conflict want to understand risk taking, then they must consider not only how leaders frame conflicts but also the character of the leaders themselves.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul A. Kowert & Margaret G. Hermann, 1997. "Who Takes Risks?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 41(5), pages 611-637, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:41:y:1997:i:5:p:611-637
    DOI: 10.1177/0022002797041005001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002797041005001
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0022002797041005001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fearon, James D., 1995. "Rationalist explanations for war," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(3), pages 379-414, July.
    2. Quattrone, George A. & Tversky, Amos, 1988. "Contrasting Rational and Psychological Analyses of Political Choice," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(3), pages 719-736, September.
    3. Frisch, Deborah, 1993. "Reasons for Framing Effects," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 399-429, April.
    4. de Mesquita, Bruce Bueno, 1985. "The War Trap Revisited: A Revised Expected Utility Model," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(1), pages 156-177, March.
    5. Bendor, Jonathan & Moe, Terry M., 1985. "An Adaptive Model of Bureaucratic Politics," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(3), pages 755-774, September.
    6. Bendor, Jonathan & Hammond, Thomas H., 1992. "Rethinking Allison's Models," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 86(2), pages 301-322, June.
    7. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1986. "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 251-278, October.
    8. Snidal, Duncan, 1985. "Coordination versus Prisoners' Dilemma: Implications for International Cooperation and Regimes," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(4), pages 923-942, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kuhberger, Anton, 1998. "The Influence of Framing on Risky Decisions: A Meta-analysis," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 23-55, July.
    2. Kuehnhanss, Colin R. & Heyndels, Bruno & Hilken, Katharina, 2015. "Choice in politics: Equivalency framing in economic policy decisions and the influence of expertise," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 360-374.
    3. Dorian Jullien, 2013. "Asian Disease-type of Framing of Outcomes as an Historical Curiosity," GREDEG Working Papers 2013-47, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    4. Timothy Mathews & Aniruddha Bagchi, 2019. "Conflict without an Apparent Cause," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-12, October.
    5. Hemda Ben-Yehuda, 1999. "Opportunity Crises: Framework and Findings, 1918-1994," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 17(1), pages 69-102, February.
    6. J. Efrim Boritz, 1997. "Discussion of “Debiasing Framing Effects in Auditor's Internal Control Judgments and Testing Decisionsâ€," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(2), pages 79-88, June.
    7. Brock F. Tessman & Steve Chan, 2004. "Power Cycles, Risk Propensity, and Great-Power Deterrence," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(2), pages 131-153, April.
    8. Eguia, Jon X., 2022. "Multilateral regime change," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    9. Norman Frohlich & Joe Oppenheimer, 2006. "Skating on Thin Ice," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 18(3), pages 235-266, July.
    10. Dhami, Sanjit & Al-Nowaihi, Ali, 2010. "Optimal taxation in the presence of tax evasion: Expected utility versus prospect theory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 313-337, August.
    11. Floris Heukelom, 2007. "Who are the Behavioral Economists and what do they say?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-020/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    12. Dorian Jullien, 2016. "All Frames Created Equal are Not Identical: On the Structure of Kahneman and Tversky's Framing Effects," GREDEG Working Papers 2016-17, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    13. Marandici, Ion, 2022. "Loss Aversion, Neo-imperial Frames and Territorial Expansion: Using Prospect Theory to Examine the Annexation of Crimea," MPRA Paper 117208, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Alex Mintz, 1993. "The Decision to Attack Iraq," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 37(4), pages 595-618, December.
    15. Allison Astorino-Courtois, 2000. "Can Peace Be Marketed? a Preliminary Analysis of Israelis and Palestinians," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 18(1), pages 97-122, February.
    16. Rose McDermott, 2001. "The Psychological Ideas of Amos Tversky and Their Relevance for Political Science," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 13(1), pages 5-33, January.
    17. Jonathan J Adams, 2017. "The Rise and Fall of Armies," Working Papers 001002, University of Florida, Department of Economics.
    18. Dino Borie & Dorian Jullien, 2016. "Weakening Description Invariance to Deal with Framing Effects: An Axiomatic Approach," GREDEG Working Papers 2016-14, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    19. Bateman, Connie Rae & Fraedrich, John Paul & Iyer, Rajesh, 2003. "The integration and testing of the Janus-Headed Model within marketing," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 587-596, August.
    20. Crain, W. Mark & Crain, Nicole Verrier, 1998. "Fiscal consequences of budget baselines," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 421-436, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:41:y:1997:i:5:p:611-637. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.