Disentangling Components of Suboptimal Risky Decision-Making in Affective Distress

Prior research linking anxiety and depression to risky decision-making has yielded inconsistent findings. This may reflect differing definitions of risk, characterized as outcome variance or potential negative consequences. This cross-sectional experimental study investigated affective distress and aimed to determine whether choices were driven by aversion to riskier (higher variance) outcomes, sensitivity to negative outcomes, or a combination of the two. A sample of adults (N = 526, aged 18-60) completed a risky decision-making task involving choices between probabilistic gambles with positive and/or negative outcomes. An affective distress component was obtained from self-report measures of anxiety and depression using principal component analysis. When losses were possible, choice behavior reflected risk aversion and heightened sensitivity to differences in expected value; however, this was attenuated with increasing levels of affective distress, resulting in less reliable selection of mathematically advantageous options. In gain-only lotteries, choices were consistent with risk seeking and reduced sensitivity to differences in expected value, regardless of affective distress. These findings suggest that decision-making and risk attitudes are substantially influenced by the presence or absence of potential loss. Affective distress alters choice behavior specifically when loss is present, suggesting that loss may play a more prominent role than variance in risky decision-making for anxiety and depression.