BART: Risk Balloon
Pump balloon or cash out
About this trainer
BART: Risk Balloon is a decision-making game built on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. You inflate a virtual balloon one pump at a time; each pump adds money to a temporary pot but also nudges up the chance the balloon bursts. You can bank the pot at any moment, or push your luck for more — if it pops first, you lose everything in that balloon.
What it develops
It trains risk calibration under uncertainty: weighing a growing reward against a rising chance of loss, and knowing when to stop. You also practise reward sensitivity and impulse control, since the smart move is to cash out before greed costs you the round.
History
The task was created in academic psychology in the early 2000s as a behavioural alternative to risk questionnaires, where people often misreport how reckless they really are. It spread quickly through addiction, impulsivity and adolescence research, was adapted for youth (BART-Y), for automatic and neuroimaging versions, and eventually became a popular gamified exercise.
Who created it — and when
It was developed by Carl W. Lejuez and colleagues at the University of Maryland and first published in 2002 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Lejuez has said the idea came from watching people pump up balloons at a fair, noticing that some stop early while others keep going until it bursts.
How to train
Decide on a target number of pumps before each balloon and bank around it instead of reacting pump by pump. Track roughly how far balloons tend to go before popping and aim a little under that, and do not chase losses by inflating harder right after a burst — that is exactly when people overshoot.
How long to practise
Short sessions work best — about 20 to 40 balloons, five to ten minutes, is plenty. Treat it as an occasional decision-making warm-up a few times a week rather than something to grind daily.
Evidence base
Evidence is strongest for what you would expect: the task reliably measures risk-taking in the lab, has acceptable test-retest reliability, and people's pumping correlates modestly with some real-world behaviours like smoking, drug use and gambling. But the link to actual life decisions is weak and inconsistent, agreement with self-report risk measures is poor, and several papers flag methodological and reliability problems. There is no good evidence that practising it makes you less impulsive or a better decision-maker outside the game, so treat any 'train your risk-taking' promise with caution.
Recommendations
Play it to notice your own pattern — do you cash out too early or pop too often? — not as a cure for impulsivity.
FAQ
Is there an optimal number of pumps?
Roughly, yes: the long-run best strategy is to bank a bit before the average bursting point, since each extra pump is worth less as the risk climbs. But the exact sweet spot is hidden and shifts between balloon types, which is the whole point.
Will this make me less impulsive in real life?
There is no solid evidence for that. You will get better at judging risk inside this game, but transfer to real-world decisions has not been reliably shown, so we do not promise it.
Is losing a balloon a mistake?
Not necessarily. If you never pop a balloon you are almost certainly cashing out too early and leaving points on the table; some bursts are the price of pumping near the smart limit.
Variants
Common versions change the colour-coded burst odds (some balloons are far riskier than others), add an automatic mode where you pre-set the number of pumps, use a youth-friendly version (BART-Y), or replace money with points. Virtual-reality and brain-imaging adaptations also exist for research.