E-Mail Network Patterns and Body Language Predict Risk-Taking Attitude

Abstract

As the Enron scandal and Bernie Madoff’s pyramid scheme have shown, individuals’ attitude towards ethical risks can have a huge impact on society at large. In this paper, we compare risk-taking attitudes assessed with the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking (DOSPERT) survey with individual e-mail networking patterns and body language measured with smartwatches. We find that e-mail communication signals such as network structure and dynamics, and content features as well as real-world behavioral signals measured through a smartwatch such as heart rate, acceleration, and mood state demonstrate a strong correlation with the individuals’ risk-preference in the different domains of the DOSPERT survey. For instance, we found that people with higher degree centrality in the e-mail network show higher likelihood to take social risks, while using language expressing a “you live only once” attitude indicates lower willingness to take risks in some domains. Our results show that analyzing the human interaction in organizational networks provides valuable information for decision makers and managers to support an increase in ethical behavior of the organization’s members.