LAUSR

Abstract To date, there is no experimental evidence for the influence of need for uniqueness (NfU) on risk-taking. In the present research, four studies involving risk tasks and a measure of NfU showed a positive association between NfU and risk-taking. Studies 1 and 3, in which we manipulated the risk-taking descriptive norm (low, medium, high), showed that NfU predicts willingness to take more risk than the norm, whatever the level of that norm. By manipulating the desirability of risk-taking (Study 2), we also found that NfU predicts risk-taking only when it is a desirable attribute. In studies 3 and 4, before participants carried out a risk-taking task, we gave them fictitious test feedback describing them as either different from or similar to the majority of participants. Induced similarity to others increased risk-taking. These studies provide the first experimental evidence for a causal link between NfU and risk-taking.