How do you measure how prone someone is to taking risks? On Wednesday, 3 December, Kristel de Groot will publicly defend her doctoral thesis, “Challenges in the Measurement and Interpretation of Risk-Related Behaviour and Brain Activity in Lab Studies”, at Erasmus School of Economics.
Risk-taking propensity (RTP) is a key concept in psychology, economics, and management, yet it is measured differently in all of these fields. De Groot’s dissertation provides a critical assessment of widely used methods from psychology for capturing this unobservable trait, sparked by the question of whether these approaches can be meaningfully applied in economics and management. Her work highlights that although researchers and practitioners frequently rely on behavioural tasks and brain-based measures – even in recruitment processes at major organisations – these tools do not always measure what they claim to.
De Groot assesses how well commonly used tools capture risk-taking propensity. She finds that popular behavioural tasks such as the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) do not reliably measure individuals’ willingness to take risks, despite their widespread use in both research and recruitment. The Columbia Card Task (CCT), on the other hand, is evaluated much more favourably, and offers opportunities for use in economics as well. She also evaluates EEG-based approaches and highlights the impact of methodological issues such as small samples and flexible analysis choices. Together, her findings offer practical guidance for selecting more reliable methods to study risk-related behaviour.
About Kristel de Groot
Kristel de Groot is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Strategy & Entrepreneurship department of the Tilburg School of Economics and Management. In addition to her PhD work at Erasmus School of Economics and Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences on the measurement of risk-taking propensity, she also coordinated a longitudinal research study into university students’ mental health. Her promotor is Professor Niels Rietveld, with Associate Professor Oliver Lindemann and Professor Jan van Strien from Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences as co-promotors.
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For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Media and Public Relations Officer at Erasmus School of Economics, rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, or +31 6 53 641 846.
