Magdalena Buckert, Christiane Schwieren, Brigitte M. Kudielka, Christian J. Fiebach
Abstract
Economic decisions are often made in stressful situations (e.g., at the trading floor), but the effects of stress on economic decision making have not been systematically investigated so far. The present study examines how acute stress influences economic decision making under uncertainty (risk and ambiguity) using financially incentivized lotteries. We varied the domain of decision making as well as the expected value of the risky prospect. Importantly, no feedback was provided to investigate risk taking and ambiguity aversion independent from learning processes. In a sample of 75 healthy young participants, 55 of whom underwent a stress induction protocol (Trier Social Stress Test for Groups), we observed more risk seeking for gains. This effect was restricted to a subgroup of participants that showed a robust cortisol response to acute stress (n = 26). Gambling under ambiguity, in contrast to gambling under risk, was not influenced by the cortisol response to stress. These results show that acute psychosocial stress affects economic decision making under risk, independent of learning processes. Our results further point to the importance of cortisol as a mediator of this effect.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 12. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 February 2023.
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#3,081,104
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#2,103
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#29,784
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Neuroscience
#18
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Altmetric has tracked 25,374,917 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 87th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 11,541 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.9. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 104 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its contemporaries.
