Hacker News Reader

Comment by keithwhor | Hacker News Reader

Be careful: this post just reeks of confirmation bias. Correlation (association) does not imply causation and it’s tantalizingly attractive to want to draw conclusions that confirm the way we think about the world.

I, personally (for example), would not generally assume neuroticism is associated with risk-aversion. In my experience risk aversion (or tolerance) tends to be completely decoupled from other traits.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, and it would equally be a fallacy to believe my anecdotal experience is anything more than an anecdote, but just be careful jumping to conclusions.

View on HN

Neroticism [1] also correlates with being female. And women, on average, have longer lifespans.

[1] The big 5 personality trait, not to be confused with neuroses.

A difference in metabolism, risk taking, or perhaps both?

The article is looking at genetic differences, not environmental ones. The small gender difference in neuroticism is actually overexplained by the difference in rates of childhood sexual assault alone, meaning that if anything females are genetically predisposed to be less neurotic.

I'd be really curious to see data on this, do you have a link?

> I, personally (for example), would not generally assume neuroticism is associated with risk-aversion. In my experience risk aversion (or tolerance) tends to be completely decoupled from other traits.

I wouldn't even say that risk aversion is a one-dimensional thing.

Anecdata: me and my SO have complementary risk tolerance patterns. She avoids financial/material risks but is happy to put herself in, let's say, interesting social situations, while I, conversely, am able to spend money to the point where I'm "running on fumes"(if I believe there's a good reason to do that), but avoid any situations where I would risk making somebody upset, even if they should be confronted.

A cursory search finds that neuroticism does seem to be correlated with risk aversion, which suggests that your claim of confirmation bias, and your admonition to be careful about jumping to conclusions, both based on your personal experience, are rather ironic.

... seriously? You didn’t read the last paragraph or what?

Indeed I did - in fact, you might have noticed that I quoted part of it. The first and last sentences of your post admonish the person you are replying to for jumping to conclusions and falling for confirmation bias, yet the closest you get to stating your grounds for believing they have ignored contrary evidence is your own personal opinion about neuroticism. Confirmation bias, of course, is the selection of data that supports one's bias, but here you are not even attempting to offer data in support of your contrary bias. A valid claim of confirmation bias needs more support than the fact that you don't agree.

And there definitely is different categories for risk. People probably don't have equal risk tolerance for eating questionable food and gambling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com