Bad luck comes in threes?

Here's an article that suggests accidents in families might be contagious. Interesting to think about the mechanism for this - there may well have been something to that old wives' tale.

UCC Lecture on Risk Intelligence

The lecture is titled: “Risk Intelligence” – How expert gamblers can teach us all to make better decisions” --- and will be delivered by Dr. Dylan Evans on Wednesday, February 10th at 8pm in Boole IV Lecture Theatre, University College Cork.

Dr Evans is Lecturer in Behavioural Science in the School of Medicine at UCC. He is the author of several popular science books, including Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (Oxford University Press, 2001) and Placebo: The Belief Effect (Harper Collins, 2003).

Link to Projection Point: a project to gather information about risk intelligence. HT: mulley.net

Weather,wellbeing & risk

The lousy weather in Ireland is a source of perennial gloom. A connection between well-being and weather seems unsurprising. What I didn't know was that lack of sunshine also seems to predict risk taking behaviour.

http://www.deakin.edu.au/news/2009/150909happiness.php

Threat to Life and Risk-Taking Behaviors

This article reviews the literature focusing on the relationship between perceived threat to life and risk-taking behaviors. The review of empirical data, garnered from field studies and controlled experiments, suggests that personal threat to life results in elevated risk-taking behavior.

Ben-Zur & Zeidner (2009)

Testorone and risk preferences

This might be of interest to risky-behaviour types:

Testosterone and financial risk preferences
Many human behaviors, from mating to food acquisition and aggressiveness, entail some degree of risk. Testosterone, a steroid hormone, has been implicated in a wide range of such behaviors in men. However, little is known about the specific relationship between testosterone and risk preferences. In this article, we explore the relationship between prenatal and pubertal testosterone exposure, current testosterone, and financial risk preferences in men. Using a sample of 98 men, we find that risk-taking in an investment game with potential for real monetary payoffs correlates positively with salivary testosterone levels and facial masculinity, with the latter being a proxy of pubertal hormone exposure. 2D:4D, which has been proposed as a proxy for prenatal hormone exposure, did not correlate significantly with risk preferences.
Apicella C.L. et al Evolution and Human Behavior 29 (2008) 384–390

RESPONSE TO FINANCIAL LOSS PARALLELS PAIN

People process information about financial loss through mechanisms in the brain similar to those used for processing physical pain, according to a new imaging study. The results could provide a new understanding of excessive gambling.

The new study detected activity in the striatum, a region that processes signals in the brain's system of reward and defensiveness. Previous studies had shown activity in the striatum increasing when subjects were awarded money, but falling silent when subjects lost money. The new study's lead author, Ben Seymour, MD, and colleagues at the Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging in London suggest that the negative value people associate with losing money stems from an evolutionarily old system involved in fear and pain. This could provide some biological justification for the popular concept of "financial pain." Their study was published in the May 2 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.