The Risk-Taking Software Engineer: A Framed Portrait

[Submitted on 21 Jan 2023]

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Abstract: Background: Risk-taking is prevalent in a host of activities performed by
software engineers on a daily basis, yet there is scant research on it. Aims
and Method: We study if software engineers’ risk-taking is affected by framing
effects and by software engineers’ personality. To this end, we perform a
survey experiment with 124 software engineers. Results: We find that framing
substantially affects their risk-taking. None of the “Big Five” personality
traits are related to risk-taking in software engineers after correcting for
multiple testing. Conclusions: Software engineers and their managers must be
aware of framing effects and account for them properly.