WHO TAKES RISKS - DARING AND CAUTION IN FOREIGN-POLICY MAKING

National leaders confront risky decisions on a regular basis. Although leaders may differ widely in their tolerance for risk, students of fo reign policymaking lack compelling explanations for these differences. One of the few attempts to grapple with this problem holds that decis ion makers accept risks to avoid losses but refuse to take risks to ma ke comparable gains. This tendency, embodied in prospect theory, is ex perimentally robust but consistently fails to predict the behavior of one third or more of the subjects. To investigate the contribution of individual differences to risk taking, the authors administered three questionnaires assessing risk propensity and two personality inventori es (the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Revised NEO Personality In ventory) to 126 subjects. The results identify strong personality pred ictors of generalized risk taking. Contrary to prospect theory, some p eople were especially willing to take risks to make gains, whereas oth ers were particularly unlikely to take risks when facing potential los ses. Statistical analyses lend support to a three-stage model of risk taking. The findings suggest that if students of international conflic t want to understand risk taking, then they must consider not only how leaders frame conflicts but also the character of the leaders themsel ves.