Am 5. Januar 2015 (13-14 Uhr) hält Professor Ulrich Schmidt (Institute of Economics der Universität Kiel) eine Präsentation zum Thema "Risk Taking and Social Ranking: An Evolutionary Perspective" im Raum Q4.245. Im Anschluss steht Prof. Schmidt für Fragen sowie einer Diskussion zur Verfügung. Die Präsentation ist Teil der Economics & Management Reihe.
Weitere Informationen und Termine der Vortragsreihe sind hier verfügbar: wiwi.uni-paderborn.de/department1/seminar-in-economics-management-seam/.
Abstract: Taking an evolutionary psychological perspective we analyze the role that social comparison plays on risk preferences. Risk taking decisions can influence evolutionary fitness of animals and humans sub-stantially. From an evolutionary psychological perspective there is a selectionist rationale for sex differ-ences in the utility function as well as in the willingness to accept risk. Because male fitness depends on relative social standing to a higher degree than female fitness, we hypothesize that men’s decisions will be more influenced by social comparison than women, leading to riskier decisions under social comparison for men. We present a theoretical model which accounts for sex differences in risk preferences with social comparison. The implications of the model are tested and confirmed by an experiment showing that risk taking increases when risks are correlated with a stronger effect for men than for women.