Lasha Lanchava, a research fellow at ISET Policy Institute, published a new paper titled “No Evidence of Association between Toxoplasma Gondii Infection and Financial Risk-Taking in Females” in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. He co-authored a paper with Mr. Nave and Mr. Carlson – researchers from California Institute of Technology, Ms. Šebánková, and Jaroslav Flegr – of Charles University, and a leading scholar of adverse influences of Toxoplasma Gondii infection on human personality and behavior.

With a large body of literature, the paper demonstrated Toxoplasma patients’ increased vulnerability to mental and neurological disorders and their increased tendencies to be involved in traffic accidents. The authors hypothesized that Toxoplasma infected patients would display altered attitudes towards risk when compared to healthy subjects.

To explore this question, the authors conduct a controlled experiment with female Czech students to study the relationship between Toxoplasma Gondii infection and risk-seeking behavior. The participants of the experiments played various experimental games (lotteries) designed to elicit their preferences towards risk and loss. This experiment did not reveal a significant association between infection and risk-seeking behavior in the sample of Czech female students.

The full version of the article is available online.