The influence of fear on risk taking: a meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

A common finding in the study of emotion and decision making is the tendency for fear and anxiety to decrease risk taking. The current meta-analysis summarises the strength and variability of this effect in the extant empirical literature. Our analysis of 136 effect sizes, derived from 68 independent samples and 9,544 participants, included studies that experimentally manipulated fear or measured naturally varying levels of fear or anxiety in both clinical and non-clinical samples, and studies measuring risky decision making and risk estimation. A multilevel random effects model estimated a small to moderate average effect size (r = 0.22), such that fear was related to decreased risky decision making and increased risk estimation. There was also high heterogeneity in the effect sizes. Moderator analyses showed that effect sizes were greater when risk tasks used tangible (e.g. monetary) outcomes and when studies used clinically anxious participants. However, there also remained considerable variability in effect sizes, the sources of which remain unknown. We posit several potential factors that may contribute to observed variability in this effect for future study, including factors concerning both the nature of fear experience and the risk taking context.

KEYWORDS:

• Meta-analysis
• fear
• anxiety
• risk taking
• decision making

Acknowledgments

Research reported in this publication was supported by National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award number U01CA193632, by the Department of Graduate Education of the National Science Foundation, NCS award number 1835309.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 One non-independent effect size included self-reported scores on the Worry Domains Questionnaire in addition to STAI. Critically, we inspected the WDQ v. the STAI and found that both scales have similar items. In fact, the STAI uses “worry” among its items in the questionnaire. Correlations between the two are also high: r = 0.71 and r = 0.73 in two separate studies (Davey, 1993; Rijsoort, Emmelkamp, & Vervaeke, 1999). Moreover, the WDQ provides no instructions to distinguish worry from anxiety. Because the WDQ includes questions analogous to anxiety surveys, but simply refers to the scale as “worry”, we considered it simply a linguistic distinction rather than a conceptual one. Notably, including this one non-independent effect had no impact on the results nor the conclusions of our meta-analysis.

2 Parallel analyses where non-independent effect sizes were aggregated to allow for standard multiple regression analyses revealed the same pattern of results.

Additional information

Funding

Research reported in this publication was supported by National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award number U01CA193632, by the Department of Graduate Education of the National Science Foundation, NCS award number 1835309. Division of Graduate Education.