Gender Differences With Respect to Risk

An article from the Scientific American website, "Men and Women Gauge Risk Differently."  Here's a quote:

"When making financial decisions, men are more likely to focus on the bigger picture, whereas women more often pay closer attention to details."

At the Actuarial Research Conference in Philadelphia last week, I gave a presentation on hyperbolic / delay discounting -- basically, the idea that we often prefer smaller-sooner to bigger-later (leaving out all the economics and mathematics, which of course doesn't do the idea any justice...), even if a classical economic framework and interpretation would suggest that that's the wrong decision.  So that complicates the modeling of human behavior -- as does the research underlying this short article.

- Rick