Shooting from the hip: self-reported positive urgency predicts rapid choices during risky decision-making

Impulsivity is a multifaceted personality trait reflecting a tendency to act on immediate urges, often linked to maladaptive real-world behaviors. One facet of impulsivity, Positive Urgency—the tendency to act rashly in response to positive affect—has been increasingly recognized as an important predictor of detrimental risk-taking behaviors. While a body of past work has uncovered a small positive predictive relationship between Positive Urgency and individuals’ propensity to take risks in laboratory tasks, little work has examined whether Positive Urgency relates to speed at which risky choices are made. Here we directly examined the relationship between Positive Urgency (measured using the SUPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale) and risky choice behavior in a simple, gain-only risky decision-making task wherein outcomes and probabilities were fully described to participants. Across two samples (a laboratory and a direct online replication; total N = 285), we observed that participants higher in Positive Urgency made significantly faster risky choices, but not choices to the ‘sure thing’ (certain) option. This predictive effect was specific to Positive Urgency as other impulsivity dimensions, such as Sensation Seeking and Negative Urgency, did not appear to relate to risky choice speed. Finally, individuals higher in overall impulsivity (taking a composite all SUPPS-P dimensions) also exhibited heightened post-reward slowing following risky wins. Together, these results highlight how Positive Urgency captures the ‘rash’ aspect of impulsive decision-making for rewards under risk.