Abstract: The communication styles of risk information influence on decision-making behavior is an important topic, one of the most important aspect is decision-making behavior of individuals depended largely on the external representation ways to communicate risk information on risk communication, recently mainly focused on comparing the numerical displays with graphical displays. On the effects of numerical and graphical displays on negative risk information, results found graphical formats are more effective for increasing risk avoidance behavior, verified the existence of the graphical effects. The graphical effects are based on the situation of negative or loss events, but in the real life, many of our decisions require to take risks in order to achieve their goals, show risk seeking preferences. Based on which, the purpose of this research was to determine whether graphical formats were more effective for increasing risk-seeking behavior under the gain information of risk communication. There were two investment items, which had different risks and benefits, used numerical and graphical to display respectively, and to examine how individuals shown risk seeking in two different types of information representation. In this study, employed between participants experiment design, participants were randomly assigned to one of the numerical and graphical displays groups, participants were required to choose one of the two investment items to exploring the information display formats influence on risk-seeking behavior, four cognitive assessment tasks need participants to make a favored degree evaluation, ranging from favored (1) to very favored (7), which were applied to determine the mechanisms underlying the graphical effect. The software package E-prime 1.0 was used for materials presentation and data collection, data analysis using SPSS 13.0. Data results showed participants’ risk seeking behavior preference, in the numerical displays group and graphical displays group accounted for 52.94% and 68.78% of the total number respectively, and there were significant difference between them (?2=4.50, p<.05 ) , that is relative to numerical displays more participants in the graphical displays group chose the item that benefits are big and risk is big, which means the graphical displays cause more participants to increasing the preference of risk seeking. Then, through data conversion, merged the preference degree of two items into a new variable, risk reeking preference index, as a criterion variable, and the four aspects of cognitive evaluation tasks as prediction variables, to make multiple regression analysis, the results show that in numerical formats, individuals decision-making behavior were influenced by the magnitude of the risk between alternatives, (Multiple correlation coefficient was 0.475, multiple coefficient of determination was 0.225), for graphical formats, individuals decision-making behavior not only under the influence of the magnitude of the risk between alternatives (Multiple correlation coefficient was 0.432 and multiple coefficient of determination was 0.187), but also more under the size of profit between alternatives (Multiple correlation coefficient was 0.623 and multiple coefficient of determination was 0.388). The results showed the graphical representation can cause more risk seeking preference under the benefit condition, extend previous research, the results verified the graphical effects were universality, contributes to in risk communication, based on the characteristics of information, using different information representation ways to extract information from this representation and reach communication effectiveness, improving decision-making level and avoiding decision traps.

Key words: numerical displays, graphical displays, risk seeking

摘要： 在负性信息采用文本表征方式与图形表征方式研究中，图形表征方式更能引起风险回避行为。基于此，本研究以获益方案作为风险沟通信息，分别采用文本表征与图形表征来探索信息表征方式对风险寻求的影响。结果显示：在文本表征方式中，个体决策主要受备择方案之间风险大小的影响；而图形表征方式中，个体不仅受备择方案之间风险大小的影响，而且更受备择方案之间获益大小的影响。结果说明：相对文本表征，图形表征方式更能引起决策者为了获益而冒更大的风险，从而表现出风险寻求偏好，从而证实“图形效应”在风险决策中存在普遍性，为我们风险决策信息提供依据。

关键词: 文本表征, 图形表征, 风险寻求