To journey as far as we can go – to lead fulfilled and meaningful lives – we must take chances. Though we may fear or be hesitant about venturing onto new ground, wise risk-taking and bold self-challenges are essential in taking ourselves as far as we can go.

• The tantalizing and compelling pursuit of mathematical problems offers mental absorption, peace of mind amid endless challenges, repose in activity, battle without conflict, refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings, and the sort of beauty changeless mountains present to senses tried by the present-day kaleidoscope of events.[Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture (Oxford University Press, 1953),  470.]
• It’s the people we love the most who can make us feel the gladdest – and the maddest! Love and anger are such a puzzle! It’s hard for us, as adults, to understand and manage our angry feelings toward parents, spouses, and children, or to keep their anger toward us in perspective. It’s a different kind of anger from the kind we may feel toward strangers because it is so deeply intertwined with caring and attachment. [Fred Rogers.]

Take chances occasionally. It is essential to growth and development.

When my son was a boy, we ate at an Ethiopian restaurant. On the table were small green elongated peppers. Not being familiar with them, he decided to try one. His mother cautioned him that they might be too hot, to which he replied “Well, Mom, sometimes you just have to take chances.” He soon regretted the decision.

Psychologists are hard at work trying to understand the foundations and implications of risk-taking. Birth order does not appear to affect it but economic inequality does. Factors related to risk-taking include “self-regulation, self-control, executive functioning, effortful control, cognitive control, impulsivity, . . . and inhibition . . .“. . . relative deprivation may be a source of information that individuals use to update their belief and change their behavior.” “Relief from incidental fear evokes exuberant risk-taking”. Depletion of self-control resources (ego depletion) does not appear to affect it. Drug and alcohol consumption do appear to affect it, along some parameters. Prefrontal cortex monitoring suggests that “heterogeneity in risk-taking behavior can be traced back to differences in the basic physiology of decision-makers’ brains”.

“Humans adapt their risk-taking behavior on the basis of perceptions of safety”. For example, bicycle riders tend to take more risks when wearing a helmet than when not. That female sexual behavior varies across the ovulatory cycle seems like an obvious point. “Night owl women are similar to men in their relationship orientation, risk-taking propensities, and cortisol levels”.

Psychopathologies may lead to unwise risk-taking. For example, “ADHD-associated risk taking is linked to exaggerated views of the benefits of positive outcomes.”

Gaps related to risk-taking include a gap between description and experience, a gap between behavior and self-report of behavior, and a gap over time. Professionals, such as surgeons, are routinely called upon to decide which risks are reasonable and which are not. In most people, decisions to take or not take risks vary with the complexity of the options presented, to such an extent that calculation of adaptive versus unreasonable risk can be like a crap shoot. People are more inclined toward risk when listening to music they like than when listening to music they do not like. However, intelligence does play a positive role in favor of adaptive risk-taking, including in adolescence. Cognitive impairments can affect judgment, leading to an increased willingness to undergo medical treatments.

Economic risk-taking is a subject of extensive study. Many behavioral phenomena are relevant. In many cultures, especially in the “developed” world, it is celebrated, and systems of laws are devised to encourage it. Investment behavior tracks certain profiles associated with risk-taking. Our consumer culture appears to have redefined “humans’ self-control ability”. Economic forecasting appears to have predictable effects on economic risk-taking. Testosterone appears to be a factor in financial market behavior and performance, a finding that business schools may see as an important subject of their curricula. However, both “(L)ow- and high-testosterone individuals exhibit decreased aversion to economic risk”. “Cortisol and testosterone increase financial risk taking and may destabilize markets”. However, if enough money is to be made first, many investors may not care. At least one study has demonstrated “a non-linear inverted U-shaped relationship between corporate governance and firms’ investment risk”.

No mathematical model or precise rule has been or perhaps can be developed to distinguish between useful and non-useful risk-taking, perhaps for the obvious reason that taking a risk necessitates an approach to the unknown. Good risk-takers generally employ good judgment. Foolish risk-takers do not. A well-considered and well-structured system of values can help us to understand the difference. Yet because we must take risks in order to grow, we begin to take them long before we know how to take them wisely. Another departure in our approach is that we do not presume that a perfect system of ethics is possible. This may seem like an obvious point but we Humanists are often challenged on our ethical belief systems by theists whose challenges imply or suggest that theirs is a perfect system. Because theistic models dominate most cultures, we offer this as a departure from conventional norms.

Our model proposes and advocates adaptive risk-taking, which is based on a reasoned assessment of the likely benefits of risk-taking behaviors. A balloon analogue risk task (BART), which assesses the interplay between risk-taking and inhibitory control, can be used to measure “advantageous and disadvantageous risk-taking” (see also here). White matter development in the brain and corresponding degrees of working memory appear to be related to these processes. (My son had no working memory of biting into a hot pepper, until he did.) Risk-taking propensity can change significantly over a lifetime and “across different domains of life”. It may have genetic foundations. “Older adults are more risk avoidant” than younger people. No surprise, risk-taking behavior can reach a peak during adolescence, due to factors including “lack of control (and) “excessive sensitivity to immediate rewards”. Impulsivity appears to follow a predictable pattern over most lifetimes (see also here) (see also this international survey). Strategies can be devised to “protect against risk-taking behaviours among adolescents”.

Risk-taking is critical to adolescents as they “venture out into the world, learn about their limits, and form social identities separate from their families, paving the way for independence.” A capacity for quick thinking is positively associated with some kinds of risk-taking. Risk-taking appears to be positively associated with creativity only in the social domain but not in financial, health and safety, recreational or ethical domains. Musicians may seek to play perfectly but they must also take risks musically in order to give a satisfying performance.

This distinction between all risk-taking and the narrower category of adaptive risk-taking is one of many such distinctions in our model. Some of these distinctions will pivot on a sharp contrast, others on a nuance. Others, such as this distinction of adaptive risk-taking is a clarification, because most people recognize the difference – and its significance – between taking a full bite out of a blistering hot pepper and cautiously trying a new dish. (My son quickly learned it.) I point out this distinction to make it clear and explicit, because sometimes we pay too little attention to distinctions that matter, assuming perhaps that they do not.

Challenge yourself. Push yourself beyond your comfort zone. If that becomes your habit, growth and progress will become your habit too.

A substantial portion of adaptive risk-taking concerns the embracing and taking on of challenges. The basketball player Michael Jordan was featured in an advertisement, stating how he had missed many important shots at the basket; his conclusion was “that is why I succeed.” Jordan had a strategy for success: most of its elements were related to embracing personal challenge. Taking on these challenges virtually guarantees that we will experience failure.

Jordan’s strategy has been described as “first learn to fail”. “Failure is a major component of learning anything.” We learn by making mistakes. Some instructors use a “productive failure” model, in which students are set up to fail, as a predicate for learning, growth and development: this has been employed in mathematics education, and analyzed in contrast to “vicarious failure” and “unproductive success”. Design principles have been developed for productive failure in education.

Fear of failure adversely affects student performance and entrepreneurship. It can be transmitted from one generation to another. Fear of success can also inhibit challenge-taking and success. Anxiety tends to inhibit some people but not others.

Personal challenge is essential to growth and development. This has been demonstrated in studies of new doctors and scientists. An “achievement goal framework” has been developed, based on acceptance versus avoidance of challenges. Cross-cultural differences have been identified: for example, in one study, North Americans who failed on a task persisted less on a follow-up task than those who succeeded, while Japanese who failed persisted more than those who succeeded.

Negative factors that inhibit challenge-taking include defensive pessimism and self-handicapping. Self-handicapping is associated with low self-esteem, and is activated by excuse-making.

Seeking out challenges and taking them on, are essential first steps in personal development. When we challenge ourselves, we set out bravely on life’s journey. Like life, these ideas are invitations. Join us, if you will.