Risky Business: A Look at Individual Behavior under Conditions of Risk and Uncertainty

People make decisions everyday where there are risks and where the outcomes are unknown. People gamble at casinos, drive recklessly and take riskier jobs at the prospect of higher wages. In economics, there is a Theory of Expected Utility which seeks to answer how economic agents forecast uncertain future events. At its foundation, this theory asserts that people will make consistently rational decisions based on probabilities and expected utility. What this paper seeks to answer is if people actually do make their decisions under risk and uncertainty in a consistent, predictable way given an array of possible risky situations. To test this question, a group of university students at a medium sized public university (Murray State University) will be given a risk and uncertainty survey. Their responses will be analyzed statistically for consistency patterns