The correlations of early life harshness and unpredictability with risk and ambiguity preferences

Early life adversity relates to many cognitive and health outcomes, but how its dimensions map onto decision-making under uncertainty is less clear. We tested whether early life harshness and unpredictability are differentially associated with risk and ambiguity preferences. In two preregistered online studies, we recruited British adults (Study 1: N = 534; Study 2: N = 521) who completed a wheel-of-fortune task manipulating risk and ambiguity; Study 2 additionally included self-report measures of risk and ambiguity preferences. We pooled the wheel-of-fortune data across studies, estimated individual risk-taking and ambiguity-aversion using computational modelling and complemented these model-based analyses with model-free mixed-effects models. Neither harshness nor unpredictability were reliably associated with risk taking. Early unpredictability, but not harshness, was associated with reduced ambiguity aversion. Using self-report measures instead, unpredictability was associated with increased ambiguity aversion, as was harshness. These findings suggest that childhood unpredictability, more than harshness, is related to how people approach uncertainty as adults, but the direction of this association depends on how uncertainty is measured. By clarifying how distinct dimensions of early life adversity shape responses to uncertainty, our study can inform preventive efforts targeting harmful decision-making.