Wearing a bike helmet leads to less cognitive control, revealed by lower frontal midline theta power and risk indifference

Abstract

A recent study claims that participants wearing a bike helmet behave riskier in a computer‐based risk task compared to control participants without a bike helmet. We hypothesized that wearing a bike helmet reduces cognitive control over risky behavior. To test our hypothesis, we recorded participants' EEG brain responses while they played a risk game developed in our laboratory. Previously, we found that, in this risk game, anxious participants showed greater levels of cognitive control as revealed by greater frontal midline theta power, which was associated with less risky decisions. Here, we predicted that cognitive control would be reduced in the helmet group, indicated by reduced frontal midline theta power, and that this group would prefer riskier options in the risk game. In line with our hypothesis, we found that participants in the helmet group showed significantly lower frontal midline theta power than participants in the control group, indicating less cognitive control. We did not replicate the finding of generally riskier behavior in the helmet group. Instead, we found that participants chose the riskier option in about half of trials, no matter how risky the other option was. Our results suggest that wearing a bike helmet reduces cognitive control, as revealed by reduced frontal midline theta power, leading to risk indifference when evaluating potential behaviors.

Burst Beliefs – Methodological Problems in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and Implications for Its Use

“…As would be expected based on this conclusion, the BART (particularly its blue balloon) became a popular instrument for gauging individuals' propensity for risk-taking, with inconsistent findings being attributed to factors like sampling variability and inadequate statistical power (Lauriola et al, 2014), rather than problems inherent to the BART. However, several authors have argued that such problems exist (De Groot & Thurik, 2018;Gu et al, 2018;Schmidt et al, 2019), and that they limit the BART's ability to measure one's propensity for taking risk. The key problems that characterize the BART are 1) a lack of clarity as to whether decisions are characterized by uncertainty or risk, 2) censoring of observations, 3) confounding of risk and expected value, and 4) poor decomposability into adaptive and maladaptive risk behavior.…”

“…This combination of characteristics makes that the task's structure entails a serious problem. Since both the balloon value (the amount collected in the temporary bank) and the explosion probability increase with every pump, the expected value of inflating the balloon -the product of the success chance and the reward, minus the product of the explosion chance and the balloon value -changes across a trial (Schmidt et al, 2019). This change is illustrated in Table 1.…”

Feel Safe and Money is Less Important! Hypnotic Suggestions of Safety Decrease Brain Responses to Monetary Rewards in a Risk Game

“…2013 ; Schmidt and Hewig 2015 ; Schmidt, Mussel et al 2017 ; Schmidt et al. 2018 ; Schmidt, Kessler, Hecht et al 2019 ; Schmidt, Kessler et al 2019 ). Participants played 60 trials of the risk game in each condition.…”

“…2013 ; Schmidt and Hewig 2015 ; Schmidt, Mussel et al 2017 ; Schmidt et al. 2018 ; Schmidt, Kessler, Hecht et al 2019 ; Schmidt, Kessler et al 2019 ). In each trial of the risk game, participants choose a riskier or less risky option which are equal concerning expected values and then receive a higher or lower monetary reward.…”

“…2018 ; Wake, Wormwood and Satpute 2020 ). On the other hand, participants who wear a bike helmet that can be interpreted as an indirect safety prime show risk indifference in their decision-making behavior ( Schmidt, Kessler et al 2019 ). Based on these findings, we expected that feeling safe should lead to riskier decisions in the risk game.…”