Cultural identity and the antecedents of risk taking: Am i good or am i lucky?

Previous literature has found that lucky experiences have a paradoxical effect on expectations of future performance (Darke and Freedman, 1997). Subjects who thought that luck was a personal, stable factor reacted to a lucky event with higher expectations for performance, while those who perceived luck as completely random had lower expectations following an initial lucky event. As a consequence, beliefs in good luck can buffer people from feelings of uncertainty and enhance risk taking. These results are quite similar to findings in the self-esteem literature concerning ego-threat (e.g., Baumeister, Heatherton, and Tice, 1993). In fact, self-esteem has been shown to predict risk taking particularly in the domain of gains (Josephs et al., 1992).