Personality and risk-taking

Abstract

This study is concerned with:- (1) A critical review of literature on games and gambling as studied by experimentalists and psychoanalysts. (2) The development and testing of hypotheses about the relationship of personality variables to individual differences among players of a popular indoor game. The individual differences measured are (a) Level of investment; (b) relative emphasis on the elements of skill and luck; (c) the individual's self-view as a lucky or unlucky person. (3) The measurement of players' variance preferences and the testing of a general hypothesis about the latter. (4) The measurement of the effects of social interaction upon forecasts which players are asked to make as part of a game situation; the development and testing of predictions about such effects. The research finds its place in a now extremely wide realm of theory and experiment concerning decision-making in games and everyday-life situations. A well known parlour game, "Monopoly", was used as the experimental setting.