Economic and physical risk-taking in 7- to 9-year-olds: The link with a novelty-driven exploratory strategy

The generalization of risk-taking behavior across different domains and the forces that drive it are current topics of debate. This study investigated economic and physical risk-taking in young children. A total of sixty 7- to 9-year-olds were presented with two computerized risk-taking tasks that tapped different domains, namely economic losses in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) and physical injury in the Simulated Traffic Task (STT). Our results revealed that the children who displayed the highest risk propensity in the gambling task were more likely to cause a (hypothetical) accident in the simulated street-crossing task. Our findings also showed that the use of novel, unexpected vehicles in the simulated street-crossing task increased physical risk-taking in children. We suggest that an exploratory search strategy functions as a proximate mechanism that increases both economic risk proneness and physical risk-taking in children.