Abstract
Several studies of choice behavior (risk taking) in achievement-oriented situations are reanalyzed. The usual ways of pooling all choices over trials and subjects conceal the series of subjects' decisions and the dynamics inherent in these decisions. A basic strategy of subjects in an achievement-oriented choice situation seems to be to start with an easy task, choose a more difficult one whenever you succeed, and stay mostly at the same difficulty level whenever you fail. A computer model, in which such simple assumptions are made, generates preference functions over the order of difficulty levels that are indistinguishable from those found in empirical studies. It is concluded that the study of choice behavior in achievement-oriented situations should be based on the analysis of the series of single decisions by one subject. For this we need models that allow the predictions of such decisions and the prediction of action-controlling cognitions and emotions.
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This is part of a paper presented in a symposium, Attributional Approaches to Human Motivation, W.-U. Meyer & B. Weiner, Center for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Bielefeld, W. Germany, July 1980. Many thanks to Dr. J. Nicholls, Purdue University, and to two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.
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Schneider, K., Posse, N. Risk taking in achievement-oriented situations: Do people really maximize affect or competence information?. Motiv Emot 6, 259–271 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992248
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992248