HEXACO Personality Traits and Risky Choices in Hypothetical Financial Lotteries: A Repeated-Measures Study

Risky choice depends not only on individual differences but also on characteristics of the decision context, including how decision problems are framed. This study examined whether HEXACO personality dimensions were associated with risky choices in four hypothetical financial lotteries varying by outcome domain and stake size. A total of 310 Polish adults completed the HEXACO-60 inventory and made decisions in lotteries involving small gains, large gains, small losses, and large losses. Lottery type was strongly associated with choice: participants more often selected the safe option in gain conditions and the risky option in loss conditions. In contrast, only Honesty-Humility showed a significant overall association with risky choice after controlling for lottery type, whereas the remaining HEXACO dimensions did not. Interaction analyses further indicated that the associations of Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness with risky choice varied across lottery scenarios. Higher Honesty-Humility was associated with lower odds of choosing the risky option in gain lotteries, whereas higher Conscientiousness was associated with higher odds of choosing the risky option in loss lotteries. These findings provide preliminary evidence that selected personality traits show context-dependent associations with risky choices across the four hypothetical lottery scenarios examined in this study. However, because the study used only four hypothetical scenarios, including two involving very large monetary amounts, these effects should be interpreted cautiously and require replication using broader and incentive-compatible measures of financial risk taking.