Abstract
I investigated the effects of absolute and relative risk framing during the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), a simulated gambling task. College students (N = 25) at California State University, Sacramento were asked to choose between two identical BARTs that were presented using either an absolute or relative risk frame, and BART performance was compared between the two preference groups. Participants did not show a difference in preference between tasks presented with an absolute (n = 11) and relative (n = 11) risk frame, and a small subset of participants showed no preference (n = 3). Furthermore, t-tests did not show a significant difference in gambling strategies between those who preferred each frame type. I discuss hypothesized reasons for this and pose that the present study serves as a pilot study for a larger investigation of absolute and relative framing effects within gambling contexts.