Acute stress does not affect economic behavior in the experimental laboratory

PLoS One. 2021 Jan 7;16(1):e0244881. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244881. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

We report statistical results from a laboratory experiment in which participants were required to make decisions with monetary consequences in several solitary and interactive situations under acute stress. Our study follows the tradition of behavioral and experimental economics in selecting the experimental situations and incorporates elements from medical and psychological research in the way stress is induced and measured. It relies on a larger sample, with 192 volunteers, than previous studies to achieve higher statistical power. The main conclusion, drawn from binary comparisons between the treatment and reference groups, is that acute stress does not have a significant impact on cognitive skills, strategic sophistication, risk attitudes, altruism, cooperativeness, or nastiness. Regression analysis, controlling for psycho-social characteristics, corroborates these findings, while also suggesting that acute stress significantly decreases men's risk aversion (as measured by a lottery-choice risk-elicitation task).

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Altruism
  • Attitude
  • Choice Behavior / physiology*
  • Competitive Behavior / physiology
  • Cooperative Behavior
  • Economics, Behavioral / statistics & numerical data
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Risk-Taking
  • Stress, Psychological / economics*
  • Stress, Psychological / psychology*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This work was financially supported by JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research grant number 17H02541 (PI: Michiko Ueda). https://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-grants/ The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.