Would You Take a Chance on It?
Incentives, such as money or other online game rewards, are routinely used to influence people’s risk-taking behaviors. The exchange of human decisions and their associated incentives has long been a subject of study among psychologists, sociologists, and economists. This research is typically directed toward developing an understanding of how people can be encouraged via rewards and penalties to engage in desired behaviors. For instance, researchers may seek to determine the best incentives for promoting workplace safety or discouraging the public from smoking. But it isn’t easy to determine a person’s motives in a given situation. Some attempts at influencing human behavior will fail due to complex social, psychological, or environmental factors that weren’t considered. Others may even backfire and nudge people toward a behavior that was meant to be discouraged. While the effects of these rewards and penalties are studied in the context of long-term trends in decision-making am