The Negative Association Between Positive Psychological Wellbeing and Loss Aversion

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Ibuki Koan¹  Takumi Nakagawa¹  Chong Chen¹  Huijie Lei¹  Kosuke Hagiwara¹  Masako Hirotsu¹  Hirotaka Yamagata¹  Shin Nakagawa¹ 

[1] Division of Neuropsychiatry, Department of Neuroscience, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine

关键词: decision making;    gamble;    loss aversion;    psychological wellbeing;    personal growth;    positive psychology;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.641340

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

When making decisions, people tend to overweigh the impact of losses compared to gains, a phenomenon known as loss aversion (LA). A moderate amount of LA may be adaptive as it is necessary for protecting oneself from danger. However, excessive LA may leave people few opportunities and ultimately lead to suboptimal outcomes. Despite frequent reports of elevated LA in specific populations such as patients with depression, little is known about what psychological characteristics are associated with the tendency of LA. Based on the neurobiological studies of LA, we hypothesized that positive psychological wellbeing may be negatively associated with people's tendency of LA. In the present study, we set out to test this hypothesis in a sample of young adults. We evaluated LA using a decision-making task in which subjects were asked to decide whether to accept or reject a series of coin-toss gambles. Our results revealed that individuals with more advanced personal growth as assessed by the Ryff's Psychological Well-being Inventory showed reduced LA. To our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating an association between positive psychological wellbeing and LA. These findings suggest that personal growth might be employed as interventional targets for correcting excessive LA in vulnerable populations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY