Dispositional anger and risk decision-making

In the pilot study, a separate group of 36 participants (18 women and 18 men, M = 33.77 years, SD = 11.18) were asked to read the initial set of 26 scenarios and rate each option for “How much effort it would involve” and “How much risk it would involve”, using a 7-point scale (1 = “hardly any”, 7 = “a great deal”), following the procedure of Hockey et al. (2000). Six items were excluded because they did not show a significant difference across risky and safe choice options. For the effort balance, another six scenarios were excluded, which presented, in the risky option, a higher effort level then in the safe option. The final set of 14 scenarios had an adequate level of internal consistency (α = 0.71) and a good test–retest reliability (r = 0.78, p < 0.001) for this kind of study (Hockey et al. 2000). Separate paired t test showed that options originally designated as “risky” were rated as significantly more risky (at p < 0.05 or better) than those originally designated as “safe”. Moreover, the differences between overall means were highly significant, t(25) = 8.88, p < 0.001. For the effort comparison, in two scenarios the safe option resulted as involving significantly more effort than the risky option, in two other scenarios effort was higher for the risky option and in ten others there was no significant difference. Moreover, there was no difference between the overall mean perceived effort requirement of risky (M = 4.49, SD = 0.79) and safe options (M = 4.41, SD = 0.82) across the full set of 14 scenarios, t(25) = 0.32, p = 0.75. Thus, risky and safe choice options were effectively balanced for the effort demands.