An exploratory approach to the implicit and explicit assessment of risk: Benefits of their combined use for the prediction of risk attitudes and risky behavior

Background: Exclusive reliance on declarative measures of risk attitude may lead to an incorrect overall picture of the construct and its relations with behavioral outcomes. This study approached these concerns from a social cognition perspective by looking at implicitly assessed attitudes toward risk measured using the implicit association test (IAT). We conducted two studies to identify the benefits of using the IAT in studying risk attitudes. Methods In Study 1, we recruited 62 students enrolled in an MBA program (older group) and asked them to complete the explicit and implicit attitudinal measures of the risk test, along with measures of risk-related personality traits. Newly collected data obtained from the older group were compared with corresponding data from their younger counterparts reported in a previous study. In Study 2, 53 students majoring in financial engineering (FE) were recruited and asked to complete explicit and implicit measures of financial risk attitudes. A week later, they were instructed to join a simulated real-world stock trading competition. Results Study 1 found theoretically expected age differences more manifest in implicit measures of risk attitude than conceptually corresponding explicit measures, further identifying psychosocial maturity as a mediator in an inverse age – implicit risk attitude relationship. Study 2 demonstrated that the prediction of individual differences in stock return performance is improved when the explicit risk control and implicit stock investment operate in a complementary manner; implicitly aggressive students who majored in FE had higher rates of return on stock when they were predisposed more explicitly to pursuing control over expected future returns. Conclusion These results suggest that implicit measurement approach serves as a useful complement to more traditional, explicit ones. It could propose a new perspective that offers a basis for providing insights into risky behavior and supplementing existing knowledge of human behaviors.