Affective imposition influences risky choice: Handedness points to the hemispheres

Abstract

The study of risk preference has become a widely investigated area of research. The current study is designed to investigate the relationship between handedness, hemispheric predominance and valence imposition in a risky-choice decision task. Research into the valence hypothesis (e.g., Ahern & Schwartz, 1985; Davidson, 1984) has shown that the left hemisphere is more active in processing positively valenced stimuli, whereas the right hemisphere is more active in processing negatively valenced stimuli. A total of 520 individuals (343 female, 117 male) participated in a self-imposed framing task and took a degree of handedness questionnaire. The results of the framing task and handedness questionnaire showed that participants' degree of handedness significantly influenced the positive/negative valence they imposed onto the framing task as well as their level of risk preference.

Keywords:

• Handedness
• Hemisphere
• Risk
• Framing
• Valence

Notes

¹This scale is identified as QS by Peters (1998).

²Because left-handers are relatively less frequent in the population (resulting in unequal cell sizes) and prior research has shown that handedness is most accurately represented as a continuous variable (e.g., Annett, 1985; Krach et al., 2006; Papousek & Schulter, 1999), we examined this question observing handedness as a continuous variable for this and all subsequent analyses. Scores were derived from the Peterson handedness questionnaire.