Abstract
Risk-taking in the ‘work’ domain constitutes a fundamental building block for a wide range of important decisions (e.g., investment) and behaviors (e.g., creativity) of individuals, groups, and organizations. Yet, what remains unknown is the neurofunctional basis of work-domain risk-taking (WRT) and how these brain substrates act as mediators in relating individual personality traits such as regulatory focus and the Big Five to WRT. This study, with a sample of 201 healthy full-time employees, investigated the above questions using resting-state fMRI. The results indicated that individuals who engage more in WRT showed increased brain activity (indicated by fALFF) in the right medial frontal gyrus (MFG) and right insula brain areas involved in goal-directed and self-regulated functions, therefore providing unique neuroimaging evidence for the notion that risk-taking is highly domain specific. More importantly, we found that fALFF in the right MFG and right insula areas has a significant mediating role in relating promotion focus and neuroticism to WRT, respectively, suggesting that these traits might have more important roles in associating with WRT, and the brain activity of the two regions (i.e., right MFG and right insula) may act as the underlying mediating mechanisms. Managerial implications are discussed.
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Data Availability
We report all manipulations, measures, and exclusions in this study. Both behavioral data and brain data are available from OSF (https://osf.io/3fx9e/?view_only=43305e9dc3c2449ebc46f32e435eac85). It should be noted that because the fMRI raw data are very large, the brain data contained in the availability link are fALFF result files. Data were analyzed using DPARSF, AMOS, and SPSS procedure. This study’s design and its analysis were not preregistered.
Notes
Given the potential differences in both the structure and function of the brain between left-handed and right-handed individuals, and considering that the majority of Chinese people are right-handed, we specifically recruited only right-handed full-time employees as participants to minimize potential biases (Lai et al., 2023; Lin et al., 2023).
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Zhong, Z., Ren, H. & Wang, S. How Do Regulatory Focus and the Big Five Relate to Work-domain Risk-taking? Evidence from Resting-state fMRI. J Bus Psychol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-023-09925-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-023-09925-4