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| Author(s): |
Anna Beatriz Carnielli Howat Rodrigues
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Psicologia (IP/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2014-02-07 |
| Examining board members: |
Patricia Izar Mauro;
Vera Silvia Raad Bussab;
Leonardo Antonio Marui Cosentino;
Fivia de Araújo Lopes;
Olívia de Mendonça Furtado Pimenta
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| Advisor: | Patricia Izar Mauro; Rosana Suemi Tokumaru |
| Abstract | |
According to the Evolutionary Theory, risk-taking is an evolved behavioral strategy to deal with individual and environmental cues about the availability of resources. Among the environmental cues, unpredictability is one of the most influential on risk-taking. However, there is no consensus whether the actual unpredictability of the current environment or a developmentally acquired perceptual bias of the unpredictability is more important. Furthermore, it is important to consider the study of these relationships in a multidimensional way in order to analyze the various aspects that influence risk (social, cultural, individual and contextual) and unpredictability (perceptive, objective and contextual). This project aimed at: (1) comparing different risk-taking instruments/measures related to different forms of participant involvement in decision-making situations; (2) investigating the relationships between perception of unpredictability in the childhood, perception of unpredictability in current life and objective unpredictability with risk-taking; and (3) differentiating gender and experimental groups with handling contextual unpredictability on risk-taking averages. This research included a phase for the development of an activation of unpredictability instrument (from focus groups, n = 35), stage of pre-test (n=46), and stage of data collection (n=211). Both for the pre-test and for data collection the same instruments were used: a sociodemographic questionnaire, a questionnaire of future milestones, instruments of unpredictability (EIFI, objective data and contextual activation through videos), and instruments of risk-taking (EPRE, game driving a car and cards game). Data collection occurred individually in experimental setting with sample groups: 120 participants were women (mean = 21.60 years, sd= 2.19) and 91 were men (m= 21.46 years, sd=2.0); 74 participants in the somatic group, 78 in the reproductive group and 59 in the control group. The results supported the hypothesized relationship between early childhood perception of unpredictability and risk-taking in mature stages of life. However, this relationship is directly accompanied by other factors, such as life expectancy, and indirectly, such as the objective unpredictability, perception of current reproductive unpredictability and external locus of control. Risk-taking means were differentiated by sex, while contextual characteristics differentiated the strategy of risk response, i.e., under contextual activation individuals use more strongly the childhood perception of unpredictability to respond to risk-taking than to life expectancy. Furthermore, this study has contributed to the construction and development of valid instruments for the study of risk-taking in the Brazilian population (AU) | |