Original Article Personality Profile of Risk-Takers An Examination of the Big Five Facets Elizabeth D. Joseph and Don C. Zhang Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA Abstract: Risk-taking is a long-standing area of inquiry among psychologists and economists. In this paper, we examine the personality profile of risk-takers in two independent samples. Specifically, we examined the association between the Big Five facets and risk-taking propensity across two measures: The Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT) and the General Risk Propensity Scale (GRiPS). At the Big Five domain level, we found that extraversion and agreeableness were the primary predictors of risk-taking. However, facet-level analyses revealed that responsibility, a facet of conscientiousness, explained most of the total variance accounted for by the Big Five in both risk-taking measures. Based on our findings across two samples (n = 764), we find that the personality profile of a risk-taker is extraverted, open to experiences, disagreeable, emotionally stable, and irresponsible. Implications for the risk measurement are discussed. Keywords: risk preferences, Big Five Personality, individual differences, psychometrics, DOSPERT Individual differences in risk-taking propensity are a long- standing area of inquiry for decision theorists, psycholo- gists, and economists. On the one hand, risk-takers are often synonymous with being reckless and irresponsible (Arnett, 1992; Lejuez et al., 2003). On the other hand, risk-taking tendencies are also used to characterize success- ful entrepreneurs and investors (Kerr et al., 2019). Despite the strong interest in risk-taking, there is discord amongst the scientific community about the nature of risk-taking as a general personality disposition (Fox & Tannenbaum, 2011; Frey et al., 2017; Hanoch et al., 2006) and its position in the five-factor model (FFM) – the dominant model of personality (Lauriola & Weller, 2018; Mata et al., 2018; McCrae et al., 1999; Paunonen & Jackson, 2000). Past research has typically conceptualized risk-taking as a domain-specific phenomenon. The domain-specific per- spective suggests that risk-taking behavior differs across domains such as finance, health and safety, ethics, recre- ation, and social (Weber et al., 2002). For example, an indi- vidual may be an avid gambler, which involves financial risk, but not be willing to smoke a cigarette because of the health risks. Recent research, however, has supported the domain-general perspective of risk-taking. Frey et al. (2017) found evidence for a general risk factor, which explained shared variance across 39 risky measures. The authors concluded that risk-taking – like personality – could be considered a domain-general and situationally consis- tent psychological trait (also see Highhouseet al., 2017). From a personality perspective, past researchers have also disagreed on how to classify risk-taking within the existing structure of personality. Specifically, it is uncertain whether risk-taking falls within the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality or is considered as a distinct trait (Paunonen & Jackson, 2000). In their comprehensive lexi- cal study of personality adjectives, Paunonen and Jackson observed several personality traits – including risk-taking – that are not represented within the Big Five (also see Lee et al., 2005). Subsequent research on dispositional risk- taking within the Big Five framework, however, has been disjointed due to – arguably – the long-espoused view sum- marized by Figner and Weber (2011): “... risk-taking is neither a unitary phenomenon nor a single personality trait” (p. 211). Considering the recent theoretical and empirical developments in risk research, it is important to clarify the location of general risk propensity within the Big Five. Although some research has examined the relative con- tribution of the Big Five for risk-taking, a majority of exist- ing work has used mostly domain-specific measures (e.g., Barnes et al., 2012; Nicholson et al., 2005; Weller & Tikir, 2011) or only examined the Big Five at the domain-level (e.g., Lauriola & Levin, 2001; Zhang et al., 2019). Domain-level analyses of the Big Five may overlook impor- tant facet-level associations. For example, the Big Five domain extraversion is defined as outgoing/energetic ver- sus solitary/reserved. Within extraversion, however, there are narrow facets such as sociability, energy level, and assertiveness. According to Soto and John (2017), the domain-level scales provide a broad overview of the traits, whereas the facet-level subscales provide more descriptive facets in those domains that can be used to identify corre- sponding behaviors. The methodological shortcomings of past research may obscure the true associations between risk-taking and the Ó 2021 Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Individual Differences (2021) https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000346 https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/pdf/10.1027/1614-0001/a000346 - Don C. Zhang <zhang1@lsu.edu> - Wednesday, April 07, 2021 6:59:36 AM - IP Address:45.21.80.15