Questionnaire Responses regarding Risk-Taking Behavior with Death at Stake

The present study investigated risk-taking behavior with death at stake by answering a general questionnaire with a wide variety of items assumed relevant to attitudes toward death, and a time-money-effort questionnaire which depicted situations in which Ss indicated the level of risk they were willing to take to benefit others when their own time, money, or effort was at stake.

Abstract

The present study investigated risk-taking behavior with death at stake. 103 Ss answered a general questionnaire with a wide variety of items assumed relevant to attitudes toward death, the death questionnaire which depicted situations in which Ss indicated the level of risk they were willing to take to benefit others when their own lives were at stake, and the time-money-effort questionnaire which depicted situations in which Ss indicated the level of risk they were willing to take to benefit others when their own time, money, or effort was at stake. It was hypothesized that Ss would be willing to take greater risks on the time-money-effort questionnaire than on the death questionnaire, and that Ss who answered the time-money-effort questionnaire after the death questionnaire would take significantly higher risks on it than Ss who had the reversed order. Both hypotheses were confirmed. Comparisons were made for Ss who scored high, medium, and low on death risk and demographic and other relevant variables from the general questionnaire.