Abstract:
Important decisions are often made under some degree of stress. It is now well-established that acute stress affects preferences and priorities in our decisions. However, it is hard to make a general case on the net impact of stress on decision-making quality in a normative sense as evidence for or against a direct effect of stress on decision-making quality is sparse. Here, we used the revealed preference framework of choice consistency to investigate decision-making quality without the assumption of an objectively correct choice. Specifically, we tested whether acute stress influences choice consistency in a time dependent fashion. A sample of 144 participants solved a food choice task before, immediately after and in the aftermath of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or a matched control procedure. We confirmed the effectiveness of our stress manipulation via an array of subjective and physiological stress measures. Using Bayesian statistics, we found strong evidence against an effect of acute stress on choice consistency. However, we found exploratory evidence for a negative association of self-reported chronic stress and choice consistency. We discuss our results in the context of previous findings of stress effects on choice consistency and preference changes.
摘要:
重要的决定往往是在一定程度的压力下做出的。现在已经确定,严重的压力会影响我们决策中的偏好和优先事项。然而,在规范意义上,很难就压力对决策质量的净影响做出一般的解释,因为支持或反对压力对决策质量的直接影响的证据很少。这里,我们使用选择一致性的揭示偏好框架来调查决策质量,而不假设客观正确的选择.具体来说,我们测试了急性压力是否以时间依赖性方式影响选择一致性.144名参与者的样本之前解决了食物选择任务,在特里尔社会压力测试(TSST)或匹配的控制程序之后和之后。我们通过一系列主观和生理压力措施证实了压力操纵的有效性。使用贝叶斯统计,我们发现强有力的证据表明急性应激对选择一致性有影响.然而,我们发现了自我报告的慢性压力与选择一致性呈负相关的探索性证据.我们在先前关于压力对选择一致性和偏好变化的影响的发现的背景下讨论我们的结果。