Risky and Cautious Values Among Narcotic Addicts

Recent research has demonstrated that the way subjects rank-order widely held cultural values may be used to predict certain risk-taking phenomena, which are referred to as the risky shift and the cautious shift (Stoner, 1968). Using a set of 12 hypothetical life-situation dilemmas written by Wallach and Kogan (1959), Stoner (1961) discovered the risky shift, i.e., that group decisions tended to be riskier than the mean of the independent decisions previously made by the individuals comprising that group. Further research revealed that one of the original problems usually produced a cautious shift, i.e., the tendency for the group decision to be more cautious than the mean of the individuals' decisions (see Brown, 1965).