Risk-taker? It's in your genes

Posted on June 18, 2014

A study in collaboration with researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), found that strategic decisions in a competitive betting game were influenced by specific dopamine-regulating genes in a person's brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure-seeking system.

NUS said in a statement issued on Tuesday that the study reveals how people have hardwired biases in decision-making and strategic thinking that can impact business decisions, including those taken at the national and international levels.

"The current study is unique in showing how a set of dopamine genes jointly impact strategic thinking," said NUS Economics Professor Chew Soo Hong, who was part of the team that carried out some of the first studies showing how dopaminergic genes are involved in risk taking and social and strategic decision making.

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Source material from Channel Newsasia