Feeling Less, Risking More: Emotional Habituation is Linked to Risk-taking Escalation

Anecdotally, excessive risk-taking can be traced back to minor acts that escalated gradually. What leads to risk-taking escalation and why is escalation fast in some individuals, but not others? Here, over three experiments (total N=225), we used Virtual Reality to simulate physical risk. We demonstrate that with repeated opportunities to engage in risk, emotional responses habituate and risk-taking escalates. The rate of escalation differed dramatically across individuals. Neither individual’s baseline emotions nor trait anxiety predicted risk escalation. Instead, the key was how fast anxiety and excitement declined. In the absence of anxiety, subjects were ‘freer’ to take risks, while the reduction of excitement may have driven individuals to take more risks to reinstate such feelings. The findings may help to identify individuals prone to risk-taking escalation and to develop tools that restore emotions to reduce fatal risk-taking.