Risk or Reward: What First Thing People Want to Know When Decision Is Uncertain?

Risk or Reward: What’s the First Thing People Want to Know When a Decision Is Uncertain?

story<br>Rady School of Management

-->

Risk or Reward: What’s the First Thing People Want to Know When a Decision Is Uncertain?

1Q, 1A – where we ask one question and an expert gives one answer

Photo by iStock/Tero Vesalainen.

Story by:

Inga Kiderra

ikiderra@ucsd.edu

Published Date

May 26, 2026

Story by:

Inga Kiderra

ikiderra@ucsd.edu

Topics covered:

Behavioral Science

Decision-Making

Uncertainty

Share This:

Share this story on Linkedin

Share this story on Facebook

Share this story on Threads

Share this story on Twitter

Share this story via email

Article Content

From online shopping to AI-powered recommendations, people increasingly make decisions in environments where they can shape – or are guided through – the order in which they encounter information.

Uma Karmarkar, a behavioral scientist and neuroeconomist at the University of California San Diego with appointments at both the Rady School of Management and the School of Global Policy and Strategy, studies how people approach everyday choices involving uncertainty and risk.

In a new paper published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Karmarkar and colleagues asked a deceptively simple question: When people face an uncertain opportunity, what information do they want to see first – the potential reward, or the odds of getting it?

Across 11 preregistered experiments involving more than 6,700 participants, the researchers found that a majority of people consistently preferred to see risk information before rewards. But they also found something more consequential: Seeing the risks first often made people more skeptical and more likely to disengage from the decision before seeing all the information.

What’s the first thing people want to know when a decision is uncertain?

“Based on our research, it seems people are looking for information that helps them reduce feelings of uncertainty before investing in a possible outcome.

In our experiments, people chose what they wanted to see first – potential rewards or the likelihood of receiving them. For example, participants in some experiments saw a digital “scratch-off” lottery ticket and decided whether they wanted to first see how much they could win, or the probability they would win. We also tested preferences for likelihood vs. rewards in situations like booking a hotel room. In that case, people could prioritize learning about room availability (likelihood) or room amenities (rewards) first.

Across these types of decisions we found a consistent pattern. Roughly 60 to 70% of people wanted to know the risk information first.

This preference was stronger among people who were more ambiguity averse – that is, more sensitive to imprecisely defined uncertainty – rather than simply people who preferred structure or closure in general.

This wasn't limited to an information preference, it also shaped behavior. When people saw the risk information first, they were less likely to spend money or buy the lottery ticket. In fact, seeing risk first sometimes made people more likely to walk away before even finding out about the rewards.

Our findings highlight that there might be a tension between what people want to know about uncertain opportunities and what companies and platforms often emphasize. Showing the most appealing aspects or "rewards" first may encourage engagement, but we find a lot of consumers look for information that helps them assess uncertainty and decide whether to proceed at all.”

Read the paper: “Sequential Information Preferences in Uncertain Decision Making.”

Uma Karmarkar, Rady School of Management and School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego.

Topics covered:

Behavioral Science

Decision-Making

Uncertainty

Risk or Reward: What First Thing People Want to Know When Decision Is Uncertain?

Related Articles

Amazon, Facebook, FBI have access to a private intelligence-sharing network

SpaceX not the behemoth everyone thought

The Mirror Is Part of the Machine

Elevated error rates on requests to multiple models

Donald Trump and sons to be 'forever' exempt from tax audits