Differences in Mood, Optimism, and Risk-Taking Behavior Between American and Chinese College Students.

Jiao Wang,Xiaoming Liu,Ruifeng Cui,Edmund Fantino,Stephanie Stolarz-Fantino

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.781609

Abstract

Mood and optimism have been demonstrated to influence risk-taking decisions; however, the literature on mood, optimism, and decision-making is mixed and conducted primarily with western samples. This study sought to address this gap in the literature by examining the impact of mood and dispositional optimism on risk-taking and whether these associations differed between undergraduate students from the United States (N = 141) and the People’s Republic of China (N = 90). Both samples completed a dispositional optimism questionnaire and an autobiographical mood induction task. They were then tasked with choosing to complete the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices reasoning task on easy, medium, or hard difficulty for hypothetical money. Selecting harder difficulties was interpreted as more risk-taking due to a higher chance of failure. More positive mood and higher dispositional optimism were associated with decreased risk-taking, i.e., selecting easier puzzle difficulties, in the American sample but increased risk-taking decisions, i.e., selecting harder difficulties, in the Chinese sample (p < 0.05 for all). These findings suggest that the effect of mood and optimism on decision-making may differ by nationality and/or culture.

Highlights

Several major theoretical frameworks compete to explain the relationship between mood and risk-taking
This study is the first to investigate the relationship between mood states, trait dispositional optimism, and their interaction on risk-taking among undergraduate students from the United States and undergraduates from China
The finding of greater risk-taking on the Raven’s task in the Chinese sample as compared to the American sample is consistent with the past literature on risk-taking differences between these two nationalities

Summary

Introduction

Several major theoretical frameworks compete to explain the relationship between mood and risk-taking. The Affect Infusion Model is a theory that proposes that positive mood increases risk-taking tendencies by heightening the perceived positive aspects of risk-taking and minimizing the perceived negative aspects of risk-taking (Forgas, 1995). As dispositional optimism is associated with positive mood and positive expectations regarding future outcomes, this trait may predispose a person toward risk-taking, in line with the Affect Infusion Model. Research has found that dispositional optimism may interact with mood to influence the perceived likelihood of future positive events of an individual (Gherasim et al, 2016) This interaction may influence the risk-taking tendencies of an individual. Studying the interaction between mood and dispositional optimism may help to reconcile the mixed literature on the relationship among mood, dispositional optimism, and risk-taking

Methods

Results

Conclusion