Do Decision-Making Styles Help Explain Health-Risk Behavior among University Students in Addition to Personality Factors?

Previous research has indicated that certain decision-making styles are associated with decision outcomes. This article focuses specifically on one area of decision outcomes--health-risk behavior--and examines if decision-making styles explain the variance in risk behavior over the Big Five factors. Five decision-making styles (rational, intuitive, dependent, avoidant, and spontaneous) and five types of risk behavior (alcohol use, internet use, junk food consumption, cigarette smoking, condom use) were identified in 374 university students. The results differ among the types of risk behavior, although generally, decision-making styles help to improve the models explaining risk behavior in the case of alcohol use and problematic internet use with the avoidant and dependent styles having the most prominent role.