Decisions under risk are often embedded in a social context that we usually abstract from when studying decision-making in the laboratory. In contrast to that practice, our experiment investigates whether risk-taking is affected by social comparisons. In particular, we focus on situations where some amount of money has to be allocated to two parties: either the amount can be shared, or a random device allocates the entire amount to one of the parties. We find that the social context of the decision matters strongly: When participants are in a disadvantageous initial position compared to the other party, they select the risky option much more often than in a purely individual decision, identical in all other respects. Overall, we find that individuals are relatively more risk-seeking in the socially unfavorable domain than in isolation, in contrast to the favorable one, where we find no or little change in elicited risk attitudes in comparison to an isolated decision.

面临风险的决策通常会嵌入一种社会环境中，我们通常会在研究实验室决策时从中抽象出这种情况。与这种做法相反，我们的实验调查了冒险是否受到社会比较的影响。特别是，我们关注必须将一定数量的钱分配给两方的情况：要么可以分摊这笔钱，要么由随机设备将全部金额分配给其中一方。我们发现，决策的社会背景非常重要：当参与者处于相对于另一方而言处于不利的初始位置时，他们选择风险选项的机会要比纯粹单独的决策要多得多，在所有其他方面都是相同的。总体而言，我们发现个人在社会不利领域比在孤立环境中更倾向于冒险，