The Effect Of Social Reference Point On Self-other Risk Decision-making

Kahneman and Tversky(1979)put forward the concept of “reference point” in the prospect theory,and point out that the reference point is the basis for decision makers in the process of judgment and selection.In recent years,besides the focus of the study of the status quo,scholars have gradually paid attention to the influence of other factors on the risk decision.Considering that most of the decisions in the real life are in the social background,the decision-making environment factors can not be ignored.Here,the status of others is defined as social reference point.In the field of self decision,scholars have carried out research on the impact of social reference point on risk decision,but there are still few studies and there is no agreement on how to affect individual risk decision.Therefore,in this study,we used the scenario of choosing job offers to further explore the impact of social reference point on self-other decision-making.In the first study,we used the job seeking situation,and initially verified the influence of social reference point on the individual's self risk decision making.On this basis,in the second study,we added a variable of the role of decision makers to further explore the impact of social reference point on self-other risk decision-making.The second study contains three experiments,respectively from different views to manipulate others.The experiment 1conducted 3(social reference point:non social reference point,upward social reference point,downward social reference point)×2(decision maker role: self,giving advice for others)complete between-subjects design,the other was set as “a college student with the same sex as the subject”,and preliminary explored the impact of social reference point on the self-other risk decision-making.We conducted the experiment 2 from the view of familiarity,the IOS scale was used to manipulate others,and the others were classified as "close friends /strangers".The effects of social reference points on the self-others risk decision making were discussed.In the experiment 3,we manipulated others further from the view of character similarity,others were subdivided into “similar others/dissimilar others”,a more in-depthdiscussions were conducted on the impact of social reference point on the self-other risk decision-making.Among them,the experiment 2 conducted 3(social reference point : non social reference point,upward social reference point,downward social reference point)×3(decision maker role:self,giving advice for close friends,giving advice for strangers)complete between-subjects design;the experiment 3 conducted 3(social reference point:non social reference point,upward social reference point,downward social reference point)×3(decision maker role: self,giving advice for similar others,giving advice for dissimilar others)complete between-subjects design.The results showed that:(1)In the self decision,social reference points have significant effects on risk decision-making.Compared with the non social reference point,participants under the upward social reference point and the downward social reference point are more risk-seeking.(2)The upward social reference point and the downward social reference point have important influence on self-other risk decision-making.Generally speaking,when under the situation with social reference points,individuals advising for others are relatively conservative.Especially under the situation of upward social reference point,relative to their own decisions,advice made for strangers seemed more conservative.Meanwhile,compared to stranger,advice made for close friend seemed more closer to personal decisions.(3)Under different social reference levels,there are significant differences in risk preferences between advice decision for dissimilar others and decision for oneself.Specifically,when there is no social reference point,individuals advising for others seemed more risk-seeking than make decision for themselves;When there is an upward social reference point and a downward social reference point,people advising for dissimilar others are not risk-seeking like making decision for oneself,but more conservative.Meanwhile,compared to dissimilar others,advice made for similar others seemed more closer to personal decisions.