INTRODUCTION
When we decide between options with uncertain outcomes, we factor risk into the decision. This is most commonly evaluated by asking people to decide between explicitly described, hypothetical choice scenarios (Allais, The effect of decision context is thought to be driven by anticipatory emotions (De Martino et al., The contextual modulation of risk‐taking can be captured by a utility function, such as proposed by the prospect theory for described risks (Kahneman & Tversky, Given that experiential and description‐based risk‐taking are thought to involve different neural systems (Fitzgerald et al., On the other hand, we might expect experiential decision‐making to be biased by the organism's needs, because it may rely more on primitive neural systems. The modulation of risk preferences according to energy reserves may be crucial for the adaptation to changes in the environment, in particular when resources are scarce (Houston, We employed two risk‐taking tasks in a within‐subject design that have both previously been used to study the involvement of the motivational system (Moeller et al., Both tasks included three decision contexts, allowing us to verify whether choices were driven by the expected value or by the risk of options. The options presented in a In agreement with previous studies, we showed that risk attitudes for described risks were opposite to those for learned risks. Hunger only modulated risk preferences for learned risks in a context‐specific manner, showing that the experience‐based system, but not the cognitive system, is sensitive to the motivational drive of an organism.