The goal of this article is to explain empirical risk-taking behavior in sports from an individual cognitive modeling perspective. A basketball task was used in which participants viewed four video options that varied in the degree of associated risk. The participants were independently classified by scores on the Questionnaire for Assessing Prospective Action Orientation and State Orientation in Success, Failure, and Planning Situations as action-oriented or state-oriented decision makers. The results of the experiment show that action-oriented players shoot faster and more often to the basket and that state-oriented players prefer to pass to a playmaker more often. Four versions of a computational model of decision making, Decision Field Theory, were compared to evaluate whether behavioral differences depend on the focus of attention, the initial preferences, threshold values, or an approach-avoidance interpretation of the task. Different starting preferences explained individual choices and decision times most accurately. Risk taking in basketball shooting behavior can be best explained by different preferences for starting values for risky and safe options caused by different levels of action orientation.
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