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The role of framing effects in performance on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART)
Personality and Individual Differences 43 (2007) 221–230 www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
The role of framing effects in performance on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) Alexander M. Benjamin, Steven J. Robbins
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Department of Psychology, Arcadia University, 450 South Easton Road, Glenside, PA 19038, United States Received 18 June 2006; received in revised form 22 November 2006; accepted 29 November 2006 Available online 30 January 2007
Abstract This study examined the impact of framing effects on performance in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Seventy-two undergraduate participants were assigned to play the BART as either a gains task in which they had to pump up an animated balloon in order to win money (Group GBART) or as a losses task in which pumping up the balloon was necessary to avoid losing money (Group LBART). Each group went through the BART three times, playing for themselves, for their best friend, and for a charity president. Although there was no effect of the recipient on BART performance, individuals in the LBART group showed riskier performance (pumped up the balloon more) than GBART participants. Furthermore, GBART performance was significantly correlated with scores on the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale while LBART scores were not. These findings support the idea that framing effects can affect performance on behavioral tasks aimed at measuring personality traits. 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Impulsivity; Framing; Risk-taking; Sensation-seeking; Loss aversion
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Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 215 572 2987; fax: +1 215 881 8758. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.J. Robbins).
0191-8869/$ - see front matter 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2006.11.026
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1. Introduction 1.1. Risk-taking as trait vs. risk-taking as framing-dependent Risk-taking is currently studied across a variety of areas in psychology, health care, and economics. In personality studies, risk-taking is often viewed as a stable trait assessed through self-report or behavioral measures and used to predict performance across situations and tasks (see Harrison, Young, Butow, Salkeld, & Solomon, 2005; Lauriola, Russo, Lucidi, Violani, & Levin, 2005; Reynolds, Ortengren, Richards, & De Wit, 2006). Risk-taking has also been a focus of interest in behavior decision theory. In that tradition, risk-taking is viewed as context-dependent and susceptible to ‘‘framing effects’’ in which the description of the situation can alter participant choices (see Harrison et al., 2005; Lauriola et al., 2005). Studies of decision making typically focus on responses to individual decision problems rather than on trait assessments of the participants. As Lauriola et al. (2005) discuss, there has been little research aimed at examining possible interactions between framing effects and personality trait measures. One of the best known lines of research in decision making comes from ‘‘Prospect Theory’’ (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) which states in part that an individual’s willingness to make a risky choice will depend on whether the decision outcomes are framed as gains or losses. Because the negative affective states associated with losses have more emotional force than the positive states associated with gains (the basis of so-called ‘‘loss aversion’’), individuals will make riskier choices to avoid losses than they will to produce gains. Numerous studies have documented such framing effects (see Levin, Schneider, & Gaeth, 1998, for a review). One factor playing a role in the expression of framing effects is whether participants make choices for themselves or for another. Krishnamurthy and Kumar (2002) showed that while people will show a gains/losses framing effect when making choices for themselves, this effect largely disappears when participants make the choice for another. Hsee and Weber (1997) suggest that this self-other difference occurs because individual choices are governed by emotional states which generate framing effects (the ‘‘risk as feeling’’ approach, see Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001). When individuals make choices for others, their responses will depend on the degree to which they perceive those others as having emotional states similar to their own. Thus, choices made for abstract others should be less affected by framing effects than should choices made for the self or for close individuals who are perceived as similar to self. 1.2. A trait measure of risk-taking: the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) There has been much attention recently to a behavioral measure of trait risk-taking called the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) developed by Lejuez et al. (2002). The BART was developed in an attempt to avoid some of the limitations of self-report measures such as demand effects, failures of memory, and inaccurate introspections. In this computer-based task, participants are shown a series of animated balloons one at a time. For each balloon, participants repeatedly press a button to administer a puff of air that causes the balloon to increase in size (here called a ‘‘pump’’) and a fixed sum of money to be added to a temporary account. On any given trial the balloon may pop, causing the participant to lose all of the money earned for that balloon. After each pump that does not result in the balloon breaking, participants can transfer
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money from the temporary account into a permanent one; doing so terminates trials on that balloon. An individual’s level of risk-taking is indexed by the average number of pumps they deliver per balloon. BART scores have been compared both to self-report measures of sensation-seeking such as the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS; Zuckerman, Eysenck, & Eysenck, 1978) and to reports of real-world risky behaviors. Some studies have found positive correlations between the BART and SSS scores (Lejuez, Aklin, Bornovalova, & Moolchan, 2005; Lejuez et al., 2002), but others have failed to find such relationships (Aklin, Lejuez, Zvolensky, Kahler, & Gwadz, 2005; Lejuez, Aklin, Jones et al., 2003; Lejuez, Aklin, Zvolensky, & Pedulla, 2003). Such results may indicate that the BART and self-report measures of personality capture different dimensions of the risktaking construct (e.g. Reynolds et al., 2006), but they could also be the product of small sample sizes. BART scores are more consistently associated with self-reports of risk behaviors such as drug use, gambling, and risky sexual behavior (Aklin et al., 2005; Lejuez, Aklin, Zvolensky, et al., 2003; Lejuez et al., 2002; Lejuez, Simmons, Aklin, Daughters, & Dvir, 2004). Furthermore, BART scores are higher in cigarette smokers than in nonsmokers (Lejuez et al., 2005; Lejuez, Aklin, Jones et al., 2003), higher in cocaine users than in heroin users (Bornovalova, Daughters, Hernandez, Richards, & Lejuez, 2005), and higher in adolescents with conduct disorder than in controls (Crowley, Raymond, Mikulich-Gilbertson, Thompson, & Lejuez, 2006). Studies of personality measures of risk have typically not examined whether performance is consistent across different task framings. In this context, it should be noted that the BART is clearly a ‘‘gains’’ task; that is, participants pump up the balloon in order to accumulate earnings upwards from a starting point of zero. Furthermore, the BART is also clearly a ‘‘self’’ task; that is, participants themselves are the recipients of the money earned. 1.3. Predictions of the present study The present study was designed to examine whether the two framing effects discussed here (gains/losses and self/other) would impact BART performance. Half of the participants were exposed to the traditional BART in which players began with no money in a temporary bank at the start of each balloon and then accumulated a fixed sum with each pump (here called the Gains BART or GBART). These temporary winnings (or gains) disappeared if the balloon burst. The other half of participants received a revised BART in which they began each balloon with money already in a temporary account which they were told they would lose at the end of the balloon. Each pump on the balloon acted to offset that loss by a fixed amount; if the balloon burst, then all the money was lost (Losses BART or LBART). In this way, each pump led to exactly the same amount of money being won in both BART versions. However, in the GBART the money accumulated upwards from zero as a gain, whereas in the LBART the money accumulated upwards from a negative sum as a reduction of loss. Each subject then played either the LBART or the GBART under three conditions: for themselves, for their best friend, or for a local charity president. We had three hypotheses. First, we predicted that participants would show riskier behavior (average more pumps per balloon) in the LBART than in the GBART. This prediction grows out of the prospect theory finding that subjects are more risk-seeking when avoiding losses than when accumulating gains. Second, we predicted that performance on the BART would vary as a
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function of the target recipient. On the LBART, participants should be most risky in the self condition and least risky in the charity president condition. In the GBART, we predicted the opposite pattern. In other words, we expected framing effects (risky on losses, conservative on gains) to be most pronounced when making decisions about the self and least pronounced when making decisions for a charity president. This hypothesis reflects the Krishnamurthy and Kumar (2002) finding that framing effects present in a ‘‘self’’ task may be diminished when choice are made for another (see also Hsee & Weber, 1997). Our third hypothesis was more speculative and involved the relationship between the two BART versions and scores on the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale. Past studies of the BART (here called the GBART) have provided some evidence for a positive relationship with SSS scores (Lejuez et al., 2002, 2004). Given the role of loss aversion in decision making, we wondered if scores on the LBART might be less well correlated with the SSS. That is, the general tendency to become risky in the face of losses might produce more homogenous scores on the LBART and therefore make such scores less well related to trait indices of risk-taking. Furthermore, if sensation-seeking as a construct is ‘‘gains-like’’ (presumably people are seeking gains rather than losses), then one might expect the SSS to better correlate with GBART scores on that basis as well. We do not know of existing data to support this idea, but thought it worth examining.
2. Methods 2.1. Participants Participants were 72 undergraduate students (24 male and 48 female) from a local university who were recruited either by posters or by word-of-mouth referrals. All subjects were between the ages of 18 and 25 (M = 20.2, SD = 1.3) and all gave written consent to participate in the study. 2.2. Research design The experiment was set up as a 2 · 3 mixed factorial design. We examined the role of gains/ losses framing by assigning subjects through blocked randomization to either the LBART or GBART condition (between-subjects factor: Group). We also examined whether decisions would vary as a result of the targeted recipient of BART winnings. Each participant went through their given BART task (LBART or GBART) three times: once for themselves, once for their best friend, and once for a local charity president (within-subjects factor: Recipient). The order of presentation was varied across subjects. Risk was measured by examining mean adjusted pumps on the BART (see Lejuez et al., 2002) defined as the mean number of pumps recorded on trials when the balloon did not explode (trials on which the participant chose to stop themselves). All participants completed the Zuckerman SSS prior to beginning the three BART conditions. 2.3. Dependent variables GBART. The GBART was procedurally identical to the BART originally developed by Lejuez et al. (2002). In the GBART, the computer screen displayed five items: a small balloon with a
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pump underneath, a reset button labeled ‘‘Transfer Gained Money,’’ a box labeled ‘‘# of pumps so far on the current balloon,’’ a box labeled ‘‘Money Gained so far on this balloon,’’ and a box labeled ‘‘Total Money Gained,’’ which displayed the total amount of money gained from all of the previous balloons. Participants in the GBART started with $0.00 and accumulated $0.05 per pump in the ‘‘Money Gained so far on this balloon’’ box. If a balloon exploded, participants gained no money and the next balloon appeared. At any point during each balloon, participants could transfer their earnings from their temporary bank into a permanent bank. The partially inflated balloon would then disappear and the next balloon trial would begin. A total of 20 balloons appeared in each condition. Each balloon was set to explode between 1 and 126 pumps (a slight deviation from the original BART which had a range of 1–128). On the first pump, each balloon had a 1/126 chance of exploding. If the balloon remained intact, then it had a 1/125 chance of exploding on the second pump and so on until the 126th pump at which point the probability of explosion was 1/1 (100%). This rule meant that a balloon would explode on average after 63 pumps. The participants were told that the maximum amount they could make was $6.30 and that the balloon could pop at any time (participants could actually only make $6.25 because the last balloon would always explode). Participants were also told, ‘‘It is up to you to decide how much to pump up each balloon. Some of these balloons might pop after just one pump. Others might not pop until they fill the entire screen.’’ LBART. The losses version of the BART was created by making small modifications to the standard BART program. In the LBART, the items on the computer screen were identical to the GBART except that the word ‘‘Lost’’ was substituted for the word ‘‘Gained.’’ Participants in the loss group started out by being given $6.30, but were told that they were going to lose all of that money unless they pumped up the balloon. For each pump they lost less money ($0.05 per pump). Therefore, for the first pump the number in the ‘‘Money Lost so far in this balloon’’ box was $6.25, for the second pump was $6.20, and so on. When a balloon was pumped to the point where it exploded, participants reverted to losing the original total ($6.30). That total was transferred to the ‘‘Total Money Lost’’ box, and the next un-inflated balloon appeared. At any point during each balloon trial, participants could choose to transfer their diminished losses into their permanent bank. All participants were informed at the outset that they were playing for hypothetical money, but that they should imagine they were playing for real money. Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS). In addition to three iterations of either the LBART or GBART, all participants filled out the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale (Zuckerman et al., 1978). The SSS is a 40-item forced-choice questionnaire where a point is assigned for each choice that corresponds to the sensation-seeking alternative. A total score (SSS-T) is obtained by adding up the points. We administered the Zuckerman in an attempt to replicate studies showing that SSS-T scores are positively correlated with BART performance (Lejuez et al., 2002, 2004). 2.4. Procedure Participants took part in a single laboratory session. Each session began with administration of the Zuckerman SSS. Next, participants were instructed that they were going to be playing a
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computer game called ‘‘Balloon Puffers’’ three separate times. Participants were assigned to either the GBART or the LBART group according to a blocked randomization sequence. In each version of the BART, instructions were then given on the computer screen as described below. 2.4.1. GBART instructions Now you’re going to see 20 balloons, one after another, on the screen. For each balloon, you will use the mouse to click on the box that will pump up the balloon. Each click on the mouse pumps the balloon up a little more. BUT remember, balloons pop if you pump them too much. It is up to you to decide how much to pump each balloon. Some of these balloons might pop after just one pump. Others might not pop until they fill the whole screen. You get MONEY for every pump. Each pump earns 5 cent(s). But if a balloon pops, you gain no money for that balloon. To keep the money from a balloon, stop pumping before it pops and click on the box labeled ‘‘Transfer Gained Money’’. After each time, you ‘‘Transfer Gained Money’’ or pop a balloon, a new balloon will appear. The maximum amount you can earn per balloon is $6.30. The goal is to gain as much money as possible. 2.4.2. LBART instructions Now you’re going to see 20 balloons, one after another, on the screen. For each balloon, you will use the mouse to click on the box that will pump up the balloon. Each click on the mouse pumps the balloon up a little more. BUT remember, balloons pop if you pump them too much. It is up to you to decide how much to pump each balloon. Some of these balloons might pop after just one pump. Others might not pop until they fill the whole screen. You are given $6.30 to start out with; however, all the money will be lost unless you pump up the balloon. You LOSE LESS MONEY for every pump. For each pump you lose 5 cent(s) less. But if a balloon pops, you lose the total amount of money that the balloon is worth. To save your losses from a balloon, stop pumping before it pops and click on the box labeled ‘‘Transfer Lost Money’’. After each time you ‘‘Transfer Lost Money’’ or pop a balloon, a new balloon will appear. The least amount you can lose per balloon is $0.00. The goal is to lose as little as possible. In both the LBART and GBART conditions, participants played the 20-balloon BART three times: once for self, once for best friend, and once for a charity president. Individuals were assigned to one of the six presentation orders in a blocked randomization fashion within each of the BART groups. Before each set of 20 balloons, individuals received instructions on the screen describing on whose behalf they were playing. In the self condition, participants were asked to imagine that they had been selected to appear on a game show called ‘‘Balloon Puffers.’’ In the best friend and charity conditions, the instructions stated that someone else had been chosen to appear on the show (best friend, charity president during ‘‘charity week’’), that this person had gotten sick at the last minute, and that the study participant had been asked to play on their behalf. Participants then pressed one of three response keys corresponding to the three possible recipients to demonstrate that they had attended to the instructions.
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3. Results 3.1. Baseline scores on the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale Lejuez et al. (2002, 2004) found that BART scores were correlated with scores from the Zuckerman scale. Therefore, we first compared SSS-T scores between the LBART and GBART groups. The two groups produced nearly identical scores (GBART: M = 20.1, SD = 7.0; LBART: M = 20.6, SD = 6.7) which were not significantly different on a t-test (p > .05). This finding makes it less likely that group differences in BART score could be attributed to pre-existing differences in sensation-seeking. 3.2. Analysis of BART scores across conditions Performance on the two BARTs was assessed using the adjusted number of pumps score (‘‘adjusted pumps’’) as the dependent measure (Lejuez et al., 2002). This score is derived by calculating for each set of 20 balloons the mean number of pumps for trials when the subjects banked their winnings prior to the balloon exploding. Scores for the six conditions are depicted in Table 1. In order to examine the effects of the two framing manipulations (gains/losses, recipient of winnings), we conducted a 2 · 3 · 2 mixed model ANOVA with Group (GBART vs. LBART) as a between-subjects factor, Recipient (self, friend, charity) as a within-subjects factor, and Trial Block (1–10 vs. 11–20) as a second within-subjects factor. There was a main effect of Trial Block (F(1, 68) = 13.2, p < .01), but no significant interactions with the other factors. For that reason, the data in Table 1 are collapsed across blocks. Across conditions, subjects showed a modest increase in mean adjusted pumps in the second block of trials (about 3 pumps). Of greater interest, there was a main effect for Group (F(1, 68) = 5.62, p < .05), but no significant effects involving Recipient. As Table 1 shows, participants in the LBART group produced more adjusted pumps across recipient conditions. Thus, the loss-framed BART produced riskier behavior. 3.3. Correlation of BART scores with the SSS-T Because there were no differences in BART scores across the three recipient conditions, we averaged together for each subject their mean adjusted pumps for the three BART repetitions.
Table 1 BART scores (adjusted pumps) across the six experimental conditions Recipient of winnings
Group GBART (n = 36)
Group LBART (n = 36)
Self Best friend Charity president
40.7 (14.7) 42.7 (13.9) 43.6 (15.3)
50.8 (14.3) 45.8 (12.4) 49.8 (12.4)
Mean across recipients
42.3 (12.4)
48.8 (10.4)
Note: Group GBART received the gains version of the BART; Group LBART received the losses version. Adjusted pumps represent the number of pumps made for those balloons which did not explode. All values are mean (sd).
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Our prediction that scores on the LBART would be less well correlated with scores on the SSS-T than would scores on the GBART was confirmed. For the GBART group, the Pearson r correlation between mean adjusted pumps and SSS-T score was r = 0.36, p < .05. For the LBART group, the correlation was r = 0.07, p > .05. 3.4. Correlations across BART trial blocks In order to check the reliability of BART scores within conditions, we calculated Pearson r correlations between the two blocks of trials (1–10 and 11–20) for each of the six experimental conditions. Correlations were consistently high in the GBART condition (self: r = 0.79, p < .001; friend: r = 0.81, p < .001; charity: r = 0.86, p < .001). Correlations were more modest in the LBART condition, but still robust and uniformly significant (self: r = 0.52, p < .005; friend: r = 0.55, p < .001; charity: r = 0.69, p < .001).
4. Discussion Two of the three study hypotheses were confirmed. First, participants faced with a lossesframed task (the LBART) were significantly riskier than those faced with a gains-framed task (the GBART). In both groups, single pumps on each balloon led to 5 cents being deposited in a temporary bank account with the potential to deposit up to $6.25 per balloon. Nevertheless, when this task was framed as avoidance of a loss rather than as production of a gain, participants made significantly more responses per balloon. Second, we predicted that the LBART condition would produce a lower association between mean adjusted pumps and Zuckerman SSS-T scores as compared to the GBART condition. We thought that the general phenomenon of loss aversion might reduce the impact of individual differences on LBART scores and that SSS-T scores might be more conceptually related to gains than to losses. Sensation-seeking scores were significantly correlated with scores on the GBART, but not correlated with LBART scores. The positive correlation of GBART scores with SSS-T scores replicates two earlier BART studies (Lejuez et al., 2002, 2004). Our third hypothesis, that BART scores would depend on the intended recipient of the winnings, was not confirmed. There are several possible explanations for this finding. First, participants may have forgotten who they were playing for or failed to pay attention to this dimension during the game. Individuals were required to press a response key confirming the target recipient at the start of each BART sequence. However, there were no contingencies compelling continued attention to this factor. Second, the use of hypothetical payoffs may have reduced the impact of the recipient manipulation. This possibility seems less likely given the significant effect of loss-framing on BART scores, suggesting that participants took the task seriously enough to demonstrate loss aversion. Nevertheless, the recipient manipulation might have been more sensitive to the absence of real rewards than was the gains/losses factor. Third, the recipient manipulation might not have set up sufficiently clear distinctions across conditions. That is, self, friend, and charity might have been viewed as more similar in terms of closeness to self than we had intended. Finally, the impact of self-other framing could be context dependent and may not equally impact performance across decision domains. Disentangling these possibilities requires further study.
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The present study also provided some evidence for the reliability of the BART. Participants in both the LBART and GBART groups showed strong positive correlations (r = .52 to r = .86) between adjusted pumps scores in the first and second trial blocks. To our knowledge, these results are the first to demonstrate the reliability of a BART using hypothetical rewards. Furthermore, the present results demonstrate that the newly developed LBART also produces reliable scores. Participants in the GBART condition produced higher split-half correlations than those in the LBART group; this result merits examination in future studies. Finally, we found that the magnitude of BART scores remained relatively stable across trials. Although there was a significant increase in scores from block 1 to block 2, the magnitude of this increase (about 3 adjusted pumps on average) was modest (about a 7% increase across conditions). At least two limitations of the present study should be noted. First, our sample consisted exclusively of college students between the ages of 18 and 25, a group which is not representative of the general population. Second, as in previous BART studies, our participants showed overall conservative behavior. Optimal performance on either BART task results from pumping balloons up halfway on average (63 pumps). Both the LBART and GBART groups fell short of this mark, averaging fewer than 50 pumps per balloon. As Lejuez, Aklin, Jones et al. (2003) point out, this finding raises the issue of whether the so-called ‘‘riskier’’ group (the group producing more pumps per balloon – in this case, Group LBART) should instead be categorized as the ‘‘more optimizing’’ group. Lejuez, Aklin, Jones et al. (2003) argued that pumping the balloons up further is ‘‘riskier’’ even if it does lead to higher expected payoffs. Nevertheless, this alternative interpretation remains a concern in any BART study where participants stop short of the optimization point on average. The results of this study have at least three general implications for studies of personality. First, they further extend the range of situations in which basic framing effects can be found. The present experiment demonstrated gains/losses framing effects in a behavioral task thought to be largely free of the demand effects/wording limitations that plague self-reports. Second, the lack of correlation between LBART scores and SSS-T scores highlights the power of framing in altering subject behavior on tasks thought to assess trait-like characteristics. Although the GBART showed the expected correlation with sensation-seeking, reframing the task as a losses problem completely eliminated this association. This suggests that studies which attempt to validate personality indices against one another need to pay careful attention to the framing of each of the measures. Finally, as Lauriola et al. (2005) have pointed out, results such as ours highlight the need for greater interdisciplinary contact between researchers interested in personality theory and those studying behavioral decision making. The present results suggest that variables studied in the two perspectives interact to determine performance on tests of personality.
Acknowledgements This research was completed as part of the requirements for a B.A. in psychology by Alexander M. Benjamin. We would like to thank C.W. Lejuez for graciously making available to us the source code for the original BART and for taking the time to answer our many questions about the programming and scoring of the task.
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The role of framing effects in performance on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) Alexander M. Benjamin, Steven J. Robbins
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Department of Psychology, Arcadia University, 450 South Easton Road, Glenside, PA 19038, United States Received 18 June 2006; received in revised form 22 November 2006; accepted 29 November 2006 Available online 30 January 2007
Abstract This study examined the impact of framing effects on performance in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Seventy-two undergraduate participants were assigned to play the BART as either a gains task in which they had to pump up an animated balloon in order to win money (Group GBART) or as a losses task in which pumping up the balloon was necessary to avoid losing money (Group LBART). Each group went through the BART three times, playing for themselves, for their best friend, and for a charity president. Although there was no effect of the recipient on BART performance, individuals in the LBART group showed riskier performance (pumped up the balloon more) than GBART participants. Furthermore, GBART performance was significantly correlated with scores on the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale while LBART scores were not. These findings support the idea that framing effects can affect performance on behavioral tasks aimed at measuring personality traits. 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Impulsivity; Framing; Risk-taking; Sensation-seeking; Loss aversion
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Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 215 572 2987; fax: +1 215 881 8758. E-mail address: [email protected] (S.J. Robbins).
0191-8869/$ - see front matter 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2006.11.026
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1. Introduction 1.1. Risk-taking as trait vs. risk-taking as framing-dependent Risk-taking is currently studied across a variety of areas in psychology, health care, and economics. In personality studies, risk-taking is often viewed as a stable trait assessed through self-report or behavioral measures and used to predict performance across situations and tasks (see Harrison, Young, Butow, Salkeld, & Solomon, 2005; Lauriola, Russo, Lucidi, Violani, & Levin, 2005; Reynolds, Ortengren, Richards, & De Wit, 2006). Risk-taking has also been a focus of interest in behavior decision theory. In that tradition, risk-taking is viewed as context-dependent and susceptible to ‘‘framing effects’’ in which the description of the situation can alter participant choices (see Harrison et al., 2005; Lauriola et al., 2005). Studies of decision making typically focus on responses to individual decision problems rather than on trait assessments of the participants. As Lauriola et al. (2005) discuss, there has been little research aimed at examining possible interactions between framing effects and personality trait measures. One of the best known lines of research in decision making comes from ‘‘Prospect Theory’’ (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) which states in part that an individual’s willingness to make a risky choice will depend on whether the decision outcomes are framed as gains or losses. Because the negative affective states associated with losses have more emotional force than the positive states associated with gains (the basis of so-called ‘‘loss aversion’’), individuals will make riskier choices to avoid losses than they will to produce gains. Numerous studies have documented such framing effects (see Levin, Schneider, & Gaeth, 1998, for a review). One factor playing a role in the expression of framing effects is whether participants make choices for themselves or for another. Krishnamurthy and Kumar (2002) showed that while people will show a gains/losses framing effect when making choices for themselves, this effect largely disappears when participants make the choice for another. Hsee and Weber (1997) suggest that this self-other difference occurs because individual choices are governed by emotional states which generate framing effects (the ‘‘risk as feeling’’ approach, see Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001). When individuals make choices for others, their responses will depend on the degree to which they perceive those others as having emotional states similar to their own. Thus, choices made for abstract others should be less affected by framing effects than should choices made for the self or for close individuals who are perceived as similar to self. 1.2. A trait measure of risk-taking: the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) There has been much attention recently to a behavioral measure of trait risk-taking called the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) developed by Lejuez et al. (2002). The BART was developed in an attempt to avoid some of the limitations of self-report measures such as demand effects, failures of memory, and inaccurate introspections. In this computer-based task, participants are shown a series of animated balloons one at a time. For each balloon, participants repeatedly press a button to administer a puff of air that causes the balloon to increase in size (here called a ‘‘pump’’) and a fixed sum of money to be added to a temporary account. On any given trial the balloon may pop, causing the participant to lose all of the money earned for that balloon. After each pump that does not result in the balloon breaking, participants can transfer
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money from the temporary account into a permanent one; doing so terminates trials on that balloon. An individual’s level of risk-taking is indexed by the average number of pumps they deliver per balloon. BART scores have been compared both to self-report measures of sensation-seeking such as the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS; Zuckerman, Eysenck, & Eysenck, 1978) and to reports of real-world risky behaviors. Some studies have found positive correlations between the BART and SSS scores (Lejuez, Aklin, Bornovalova, & Moolchan, 2005; Lejuez et al., 2002), but others have failed to find such relationships (Aklin, Lejuez, Zvolensky, Kahler, & Gwadz, 2005; Lejuez, Aklin, Jones et al., 2003; Lejuez, Aklin, Zvolensky, & Pedulla, 2003). Such results may indicate that the BART and self-report measures of personality capture different dimensions of the risktaking construct (e.g. Reynolds et al., 2006), but they could also be the product of small sample sizes. BART scores are more consistently associated with self-reports of risk behaviors such as drug use, gambling, and risky sexual behavior (Aklin et al., 2005; Lejuez, Aklin, Zvolensky, et al., 2003; Lejuez et al., 2002; Lejuez, Simmons, Aklin, Daughters, & Dvir, 2004). Furthermore, BART scores are higher in cigarette smokers than in nonsmokers (Lejuez et al., 2005; Lejuez, Aklin, Jones et al., 2003), higher in cocaine users than in heroin users (Bornovalova, Daughters, Hernandez, Richards, & Lejuez, 2005), and higher in adolescents with conduct disorder than in controls (Crowley, Raymond, Mikulich-Gilbertson, Thompson, & Lejuez, 2006). Studies of personality measures of risk have typically not examined whether performance is consistent across different task framings. In this context, it should be noted that the BART is clearly a ‘‘gains’’ task; that is, participants pump up the balloon in order to accumulate earnings upwards from a starting point of zero. Furthermore, the BART is also clearly a ‘‘self’’ task; that is, participants themselves are the recipients of the money earned. 1.3. Predictions of the present study The present study was designed to examine whether the two framing effects discussed here (gains/losses and self/other) would impact BART performance. Half of the participants were exposed to the traditional BART in which players began with no money in a temporary bank at the start of each balloon and then accumulated a fixed sum with each pump (here called the Gains BART or GBART). These temporary winnings (or gains) disappeared if the balloon burst. The other half of participants received a revised BART in which they began each balloon with money already in a temporary account which they were told they would lose at the end of the balloon. Each pump on the balloon acted to offset that loss by a fixed amount; if the balloon burst, then all the money was lost (Losses BART or LBART). In this way, each pump led to exactly the same amount of money being won in both BART versions. However, in the GBART the money accumulated upwards from zero as a gain, whereas in the LBART the money accumulated upwards from a negative sum as a reduction of loss. Each subject then played either the LBART or the GBART under three conditions: for themselves, for their best friend, or for a local charity president. We had three hypotheses. First, we predicted that participants would show riskier behavior (average more pumps per balloon) in the LBART than in the GBART. This prediction grows out of the prospect theory finding that subjects are more risk-seeking when avoiding losses than when accumulating gains. Second, we predicted that performance on the BART would vary as a
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function of the target recipient. On the LBART, participants should be most risky in the self condition and least risky in the charity president condition. In the GBART, we predicted the opposite pattern. In other words, we expected framing effects (risky on losses, conservative on gains) to be most pronounced when making decisions about the self and least pronounced when making decisions for a charity president. This hypothesis reflects the Krishnamurthy and Kumar (2002) finding that framing effects present in a ‘‘self’’ task may be diminished when choice are made for another (see also Hsee & Weber, 1997). Our third hypothesis was more speculative and involved the relationship between the two BART versions and scores on the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale. Past studies of the BART (here called the GBART) have provided some evidence for a positive relationship with SSS scores (Lejuez et al., 2002, 2004). Given the role of loss aversion in decision making, we wondered if scores on the LBART might be less well correlated with the SSS. That is, the general tendency to become risky in the face of losses might produce more homogenous scores on the LBART and therefore make such scores less well related to trait indices of risk-taking. Furthermore, if sensation-seeking as a construct is ‘‘gains-like’’ (presumably people are seeking gains rather than losses), then one might expect the SSS to better correlate with GBART scores on that basis as well. We do not know of existing data to support this idea, but thought it worth examining.
2. Methods 2.1. Participants Participants were 72 undergraduate students (24 male and 48 female) from a local university who were recruited either by posters or by word-of-mouth referrals. All subjects were between the ages of 18 and 25 (M = 20.2, SD = 1.3) and all gave written consent to participate in the study. 2.2. Research design The experiment was set up as a 2 · 3 mixed factorial design. We examined the role of gains/ losses framing by assigning subjects through blocked randomization to either the LBART or GBART condition (between-subjects factor: Group). We also examined whether decisions would vary as a result of the targeted recipient of BART winnings. Each participant went through their given BART task (LBART or GBART) three times: once for themselves, once for their best friend, and once for a local charity president (within-subjects factor: Recipient). The order of presentation was varied across subjects. Risk was measured by examining mean adjusted pumps on the BART (see Lejuez et al., 2002) defined as the mean number of pumps recorded on trials when the balloon did not explode (trials on which the participant chose to stop themselves). All participants completed the Zuckerman SSS prior to beginning the three BART conditions. 2.3. Dependent variables GBART. The GBART was procedurally identical to the BART originally developed by Lejuez et al. (2002). In the GBART, the computer screen displayed five items: a small balloon with a
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pump underneath, a reset button labeled ‘‘Transfer Gained Money,’’ a box labeled ‘‘# of pumps so far on the current balloon,’’ a box labeled ‘‘Money Gained so far on this balloon,’’ and a box labeled ‘‘Total Money Gained,’’ which displayed the total amount of money gained from all of the previous balloons. Participants in the GBART started with $0.00 and accumulated $0.05 per pump in the ‘‘Money Gained so far on this balloon’’ box. If a balloon exploded, participants gained no money and the next balloon appeared. At any point during each balloon, participants could transfer their earnings from their temporary bank into a permanent bank. The partially inflated balloon would then disappear and the next balloon trial would begin. A total of 20 balloons appeared in each condition. Each balloon was set to explode between 1 and 126 pumps (a slight deviation from the original BART which had a range of 1–128). On the first pump, each balloon had a 1/126 chance of exploding. If the balloon remained intact, then it had a 1/125 chance of exploding on the second pump and so on until the 126th pump at which point the probability of explosion was 1/1 (100%). This rule meant that a balloon would explode on average after 63 pumps. The participants were told that the maximum amount they could make was $6.30 and that the balloon could pop at any time (participants could actually only make $6.25 because the last balloon would always explode). Participants were also told, ‘‘It is up to you to decide how much to pump up each balloon. Some of these balloons might pop after just one pump. Others might not pop until they fill the entire screen.’’ LBART. The losses version of the BART was created by making small modifications to the standard BART program. In the LBART, the items on the computer screen were identical to the GBART except that the word ‘‘Lost’’ was substituted for the word ‘‘Gained.’’ Participants in the loss group started out by being given $6.30, but were told that they were going to lose all of that money unless they pumped up the balloon. For each pump they lost less money ($0.05 per pump). Therefore, for the first pump the number in the ‘‘Money Lost so far in this balloon’’ box was $6.25, for the second pump was $6.20, and so on. When a balloon was pumped to the point where it exploded, participants reverted to losing the original total ($6.30). That total was transferred to the ‘‘Total Money Lost’’ box, and the next un-inflated balloon appeared. At any point during each balloon trial, participants could choose to transfer their diminished losses into their permanent bank. All participants were informed at the outset that they were playing for hypothetical money, but that they should imagine they were playing for real money. Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS). In addition to three iterations of either the LBART or GBART, all participants filled out the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale (Zuckerman et al., 1978). The SSS is a 40-item forced-choice questionnaire where a point is assigned for each choice that corresponds to the sensation-seeking alternative. A total score (SSS-T) is obtained by adding up the points. We administered the Zuckerman in an attempt to replicate studies showing that SSS-T scores are positively correlated with BART performance (Lejuez et al., 2002, 2004). 2.4. Procedure Participants took part in a single laboratory session. Each session began with administration of the Zuckerman SSS. Next, participants were instructed that they were going to be playing a
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computer game called ‘‘Balloon Puffers’’ three separate times. Participants were assigned to either the GBART or the LBART group according to a blocked randomization sequence. In each version of the BART, instructions were then given on the computer screen as described below. 2.4.1. GBART instructions Now you’re going to see 20 balloons, one after another, on the screen. For each balloon, you will use the mouse to click on the box that will pump up the balloon. Each click on the mouse pumps the balloon up a little more. BUT remember, balloons pop if you pump them too much. It is up to you to decide how much to pump each balloon. Some of these balloons might pop after just one pump. Others might not pop until they fill the whole screen. You get MONEY for every pump. Each pump earns 5 cent(s). But if a balloon pops, you gain no money for that balloon. To keep the money from a balloon, stop pumping before it pops and click on the box labeled ‘‘Transfer Gained Money’’. After each time, you ‘‘Transfer Gained Money’’ or pop a balloon, a new balloon will appear. The maximum amount you can earn per balloon is $6.30. The goal is to gain as much money as possible. 2.4.2. LBART instructions Now you’re going to see 20 balloons, one after another, on the screen. For each balloon, you will use the mouse to click on the box that will pump up the balloon. Each click on the mouse pumps the balloon up a little more. BUT remember, balloons pop if you pump them too much. It is up to you to decide how much to pump each balloon. Some of these balloons might pop after just one pump. Others might not pop until they fill the whole screen. You are given $6.30 to start out with; however, all the money will be lost unless you pump up the balloon. You LOSE LESS MONEY for every pump. For each pump you lose 5 cent(s) less. But if a balloon pops, you lose the total amount of money that the balloon is worth. To save your losses from a balloon, stop pumping before it pops and click on the box labeled ‘‘Transfer Lost Money’’. After each time you ‘‘Transfer Lost Money’’ or pop a balloon, a new balloon will appear. The least amount you can lose per balloon is $0.00. The goal is to lose as little as possible. In both the LBART and GBART conditions, participants played the 20-balloon BART three times: once for self, once for best friend, and once for a charity president. Individuals were assigned to one of the six presentation orders in a blocked randomization fashion within each of the BART groups. Before each set of 20 balloons, individuals received instructions on the screen describing on whose behalf they were playing. In the self condition, participants were asked to imagine that they had been selected to appear on a game show called ‘‘Balloon Puffers.’’ In the best friend and charity conditions, the instructions stated that someone else had been chosen to appear on the show (best friend, charity president during ‘‘charity week’’), that this person had gotten sick at the last minute, and that the study participant had been asked to play on their behalf. Participants then pressed one of three response keys corresponding to the three possible recipients to demonstrate that they had attended to the instructions.
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3. Results 3.1. Baseline scores on the Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Scale Lejuez et al. (2002, 2004) found that BART scores were correlated with scores from the Zuckerman scale. Therefore, we first compared SSS-T scores between the LBART and GBART groups. The two groups produced nearly identical scores (GBART: M = 20.1, SD = 7.0; LBART: M = 20.6, SD = 6.7) which were not significantly different on a t-test (p > .05). This finding makes it less likely that group differences in BART score could be attributed to pre-existing differences in sensation-seeking. 3.2. Analysis of BART scores across conditions Performance on the two BARTs was assessed using the adjusted number of pumps score (‘‘adjusted pumps’’) as the dependent measure (Lejuez et al., 2002). This score is derived by calculating for each set of 20 balloons the mean number of pumps for trials when the subjects banked their winnings prior to the balloon exploding. Scores for the six conditions are depicted in Table 1. In order to examine the effects of the two framing manipulations (gains/losses, recipient of winnings), we conducted a 2 · 3 · 2 mixed model ANOVA with Group (GBART vs. LBART) as a between-subjects factor, Recipient (self, friend, charity) as a within-subjects factor, and Trial Block (1–10 vs. 11–20) as a second within-subjects factor. There was a main effect of Trial Block (F(1, 68) = 13.2, p < .01), but no significant interactions with the other factors. For that reason, the data in Table 1 are collapsed across blocks. Across conditions, subjects showed a modest increase in mean adjusted pumps in the second block of trials (about 3 pumps). Of greater interest, there was a main effect for Group (F(1, 68) = 5.62, p < .05), but no significant effects involving Recipient. As Table 1 shows, participants in the LBART group produced more adjusted pumps across recipient conditions. Thus, the loss-framed BART produced riskier behavior. 3.3. Correlation of BART scores with the SSS-T Because there were no differences in BART scores across the three recipient conditions, we averaged together for each subject their mean adjusted pumps for the three BART repetitions.
Table 1 BART scores (adjusted pumps) across the six experimental conditions Recipient of winnings
Group GBART (n = 36)
Group LBART (n = 36)
Self Best friend Charity president
40.7 (14.7) 42.7 (13.9) 43.6 (15.3)
50.8 (14.3) 45.8 (12.4) 49.8 (12.4)
Mean across recipients
42.3 (12.4)
48.8 (10.4)
Note: Group GBART received the gains version of the BART; Group LBART received the losses version. Adjusted pumps represent the number of pumps made for those balloons which did not explode. All values are mean (sd).
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Our prediction that scores on the LBART would be less well correlated with scores on the SSS-T than would scores on the GBART was confirmed. For the GBART group, the Pearson r correlation between mean adjusted pumps and SSS-T score was r = 0.36, p < .05. For the LBART group, the correlation was r = 0.07, p > .05. 3.4. Correlations across BART trial blocks In order to check the reliability of BART scores within conditions, we calculated Pearson r correlations between the two blocks of trials (1–10 and 11–20) for each of the six experimental conditions. Correlations were consistently high in the GBART condition (self: r = 0.79, p < .001; friend: r = 0.81, p < .001; charity: r = 0.86, p < .001). Correlations were more modest in the LBART condition, but still robust and uniformly significant (self: r = 0.52, p < .005; friend: r = 0.55, p < .001; charity: r = 0.69, p < .001).
4. Discussion Two of the three study hypotheses were confirmed. First, participants faced with a lossesframed task (the LBART) were significantly riskier than those faced with a gains-framed task (the GBART). In both groups, single pumps on each balloon led to 5 cents being deposited in a temporary bank account with the potential to deposit up to $6.25 per balloon. Nevertheless, when this task was framed as avoidance of a loss rather than as production of a gain, participants made significantly more responses per balloon. Second, we predicted that the LBART condition would produce a lower association between mean adjusted pumps and Zuckerman SSS-T scores as compared to the GBART condition. We thought that the general phenomenon of loss aversion might reduce the impact of individual differences on LBART scores and that SSS-T scores might be more conceptually related to gains than to losses. Sensation-seeking scores were significantly correlated with scores on the GBART, but not correlated with LBART scores. The positive correlation of GBART scores with SSS-T scores replicates two earlier BART studies (Lejuez et al., 2002, 2004). Our third hypothesis, that BART scores would depend on the intended recipient of the winnings, was not confirmed. There are several possible explanations for this finding. First, participants may have forgotten who they were playing for or failed to pay attention to this dimension during the game. Individuals were required to press a response key confirming the target recipient at the start of each BART sequence. However, there were no contingencies compelling continued attention to this factor. Second, the use of hypothetical payoffs may have reduced the impact of the recipient manipulation. This possibility seems less likely given the significant effect of loss-framing on BART scores, suggesting that participants took the task seriously enough to demonstrate loss aversion. Nevertheless, the recipient manipulation might have been more sensitive to the absence of real rewards than was the gains/losses factor. Third, the recipient manipulation might not have set up sufficiently clear distinctions across conditions. That is, self, friend, and charity might have been viewed as more similar in terms of closeness to self than we had intended. Finally, the impact of self-other framing could be context dependent and may not equally impact performance across decision domains. Disentangling these possibilities requires further study.
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The present study also provided some evidence for the reliability of the BART. Participants in both the LBART and GBART groups showed strong positive correlations (r = .52 to r = .86) between adjusted pumps scores in the first and second trial blocks. To our knowledge, these results are the first to demonstrate the reliability of a BART using hypothetical rewards. Furthermore, the present results demonstrate that the newly developed LBART also produces reliable scores. Participants in the GBART condition produced higher split-half correlations than those in the LBART group; this result merits examination in future studies. Finally, we found that the magnitude of BART scores remained relatively stable across trials. Although there was a significant increase in scores from block 1 to block 2, the magnitude of this increase (about 3 adjusted pumps on average) was modest (about a 7% increase across conditions). At least two limitations of the present study should be noted. First, our sample consisted exclusively of college students between the ages of 18 and 25, a group which is not representative of the general population. Second, as in previous BART studies, our participants showed overall conservative behavior. Optimal performance on either BART task results from pumping balloons up halfway on average (63 pumps). Both the LBART and GBART groups fell short of this mark, averaging fewer than 50 pumps per balloon. As Lejuez, Aklin, Jones et al. (2003) point out, this finding raises the issue of whether the so-called ‘‘riskier’’ group (the group producing more pumps per balloon – in this case, Group LBART) should instead be categorized as the ‘‘more optimizing’’ group. Lejuez, Aklin, Jones et al. (2003) argued that pumping the balloons up further is ‘‘riskier’’ even if it does lead to higher expected payoffs. Nevertheless, this alternative interpretation remains a concern in any BART study where participants stop short of the optimization point on average. The results of this study have at least three general implications for studies of personality. First, they further extend the range of situations in which basic framing effects can be found. The present experiment demonstrated gains/losses framing effects in a behavioral task thought to be largely free of the demand effects/wording limitations that plague self-reports. Second, the lack of correlation between LBART scores and SSS-T scores highlights the power of framing in altering subject behavior on tasks thought to assess trait-like characteristics. Although the GBART showed the expected correlation with sensation-seeking, reframing the task as a losses problem completely eliminated this association. This suggests that studies which attempt to validate personality indices against one another need to pay careful attention to the framing of each of the measures. Finally, as Lauriola et al. (2005) have pointed out, results such as ours highlight the need for greater interdisciplinary contact between researchers interested in personality theory and those studying behavioral decision making. The present results suggest that variables studied in the two perspectives interact to determine performance on tests of personality.
Acknowledgements This research was completed as part of the requirements for a B.A. in psychology by Alexander M. Benjamin. We would like to thank C.W. Lejuez for graciously making available to us the source code for the original BART and for taking the time to answer our many questions about the programming and scoring of the task.
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