There has been quite a lot of exciting (for me, at least) neurological research in the last few decades aimed at understanding the neurology of risk taking, with research on our dear laboratory rats, testing for example how their behaviour changed when injecting amphetamine, nicotine and diazepam into them (Mitchell et al, 2011), until more recent studies on “laboratory humans”, a.k.a. university students (Burke et al, 2018), testing the effect of anti-schizophrenia medication called amisulpride, that can have different effects based on the doses.
Anyway, it turns out that indeed it is possible to modify someone’s risk-aversion by intervening pharmacologically, as shown also in other studies (see for example Rutledge et al, 2015).
While most people do not regularly use medications like L-Dopa or Amisulpride (highlighted in the studies), one should be aware that certain neural activities (e.g. dopamine-related brain activity) has a significant effect on risk-taking AND can be influenced by factors as common as coffee consumption, a bit less common but not so rare like alcohol (ab)use, depression, and consumption of various recreational drugs.
Other interesting studies (see review by Apicella et al, 2014) on testosterone have shown a (stereotypically expected) positive relationship between testosterone levels and risk taking, although the effect of artificially increasing testosterone levels has not yielded significant results, although the studies published have been limited in scope.
The key message is that risk-aversion (or risk-seeking, and related real-life decisions) is not constant, can be influenced by external factors, and one should have a framework/mechanisms to be aware of such states and influencing factors, in order to control his risk profile. There are tendencies, innate attitudes, but things can and do change, and decisions taken when changes in risk profile are significant, can have significant consequences.
For those who haven’t read it, the title of the post in connection with the experiments on both rats and humans, is also a popular (but at times censored) novel by John Steinbeck, published in 1937.