Personality, Gender, and Risk: a Framing Analysis

Abstract

Recent literature has explored the effect of personality type on economic education. This paper extends that literature by tying personality types and gender to individual decision making for issues involving risk anduncertainty. This study replicates findings that the framing of uncertain decisions, although a violation of strict expected utility theory, is a widespread phenomenon. Through reported personality measures, framing, gender, and personality types are linked. These finding demonstrate that both personality types and gender are important when considering the evaluation of decisions involving risk and uncertainty. Personality types, as well as gender, are found to yield significant differences in decision making both in terms of risk preference and framing. Since behavior is influenced by personality type and gender, then the concern for economic educators is that learning is also influenced. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]