Revisiting the Effects of Anger on Risk-Taking: Empirical and Meta-Analytic Evidence for Differences Between Males and Females

That anger elicited in one situation can carry over to drive risky behavior in another situation has been described since the days of Aristotle. The present studies examine the mechanisms through which and the conditions under which such behavior occurs. Across three experiments, as well as a meta-analytic synthesis of the data, results reveal that incidental anger is significantly more likely to drive risky decision making among males than among females. Moreover, the experiments document that, under certain circumstances, such risk-taking pays off financially. Indeed, the present experiments demonstrate that, because the expected-value-maximizing strategy in these studies rewarded risk-taking, angry-male individuals earned more money than did both neutral-emotion males and angry females. In sum, these studies found evidence for robust disparities between males and females for anger-driven risk-taking. Importantly, although men did not experience more anger than women, they did show a heightened tendency to respond to anger with risk-taking. Published 2016. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.