Risky Business

What is the evolutionary rationale for risk taking? Is it not a better strategy to play it safe? Like most questions of the sort, the answer to this one is "it depends." Trying to conquer the world is a pretty risky enterprise but something like 8% of all the males in a wide swath of Asia turn out to be descended in the male line (father to son) from Genghiz Khan. Zero of them turn out to be descended from those who failed before reproducing.

Risk taking is the engine behind exploration, entrepreneurship, scientific and technical progress, and asking the prom queen for a date. It's also implicated in crime, addiction, financial panics and lousy driving (right up there with talking on cell phones).

For most of us, following the herd is more comfortable than striking out on one's own. Physicists ten years ago became string theorists (today probably cosmologists) because that was the thing to do - but those who became string theorists thirty years ago were pioneers. Most of those who dare to think independently fail, and even those who don't suffer the oppobrium of being called "crackpot" by the members of the herd.

So much for philosophy. The Washington Post today has an article on the physiology. It seems to be a matter of dopamine auto-receptors.

-- Just in time for New Year's Eve comes research suggesting that "thrill-seeking" behaviors may be hard-wired into the brain.

Specifically, the study suggests that risk-takers -- those people who often engage in impulsive, rule-breaking entanglements with food, drink, drugs, sex, money and the like -- have fewer so-called dopamine "auto-receptors." These auto-receptors are designed to limit the release of the brain chemical dopamine. As a result, exciting activities typically associated with "feel good" dopamine stimulation trigger higher levels of dopamine release than normal -- essentially rewarding and encouraging thrill-seeking behavior, the researchers said.

Risk taking is likely to be a frequency dependent selection trait. It's probably an advantage to be a rare risk taker in a crowd of play-safers - and vice versa.

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