Risk presentation format and retirement portfolio preferences: Emotions and risk-taking rationality at different levels of financial competence

The aim of this study is to understand how lay investors react to different ways to present investment risk. Specifically, by using a range of neurophysiological tools that measure the response of human peripheral and central nervous system to the presented stimuli, the project will investigate individuals' emotional state and rationality of risk-taking at different levels of financial competence, conditional on individual demographics and subjective stock market expectations. Collected simultaneously within a multimodal setup, the use of these measures will allow to triangulate the response of individuals' central and peripheral nervous system when individuals make the choice of one of the investment alternatives in a retirement portfolio task. The outcomes of this experimental study will be of interest to policy makers and investors interested in better understanding the role of affect in retirement portfolio choices.