‘Nudging’ Risky Decision-Making : The Causal Influence of Information Order

Recent studies have suggested that there may be a correlation between the order in which decision-makers collect information about risky gambles and their tendency to make expected value maximizing decisions. In this work we present results from an experiment designed to establish causality by exogenously manipulating the order in which participants view information about probabilities and payoffs. We find that there is a relationship between information presentation and the amount of risk participants take. This suggests that the choice architecture for real world risky decision making may have both intended and unintended consequences