Interoceptive sensibility tunes risk-taking behaviour when body-related stimuli come into play

In everyday life, we continuously make decisions, assuming the risk by making choices on material possessions or our body. Bodily signals may support the decision-making process, informing us about possible outcomes. Sensibility for such internal bodily changes influences the way we perceive the environment, and it can boost the body-related stimuli processing. Thus, the question arises of whether the individual sensibility to interoceptive signals modulates decision-making in the presence of biological stimuli. To test this hypothesis, we administered 50 healthy subjects with the Balloon Analogue Risk Task, in which participants were required to inflate a virtual balloon, and a modified version of it, in which they inflated a virtual body. We found that interoceptive sensibility predicted risk-taking behaviour only in the presence of body-related stimuli. Our results provided new evidence on the role of interoceptive sensibility in complex cognitive functions, such as risk-taking behaviour, which impacts the way we act within our society.