The impact of threat of shock on the framing effect and temporal discounting: executive functions unperturbed by acute stress?

Frontiers in Psychology

Oliver J. Robinson¹ 

关键词: threat of shock;    stress;    temporal discounting;    framing effect;    anxiety;    depression;    executive function;    Bayesian models;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01315

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Anxiety and stress-related disorders constitute a large global health burden, but are still poorly understood. Prior work has demonstrated clear impacts of stress upon basic cognitive function: biasing attention toward unexpected and potentially threatening information and instantiating a negative affective bias. However, the impact that these changes have on higher-order, executive, decision-making processes is unclear. In this study, we examined the impact of a translational within-subjects stress induction (threat of unpredictable shock) on two well-established executive decision-making biases: the framing effect (N = 83), and temporal discounting (N = 36). In both studies, we demonstrate (a) clear subjective effects of stress, and (b) clear executive decision-making biases but (c) no impact of stress on these decision-making biases. Indeed, Bayes factor analyses confirmed substantial preference for decision-making models that did not include stress. We posit that while stress may induce subjective mood change and alter low-level perceptual and action processes (Robinson et al., 2013c), some higher-level executive processes remain unperturbed by these impacts. As such, although stress can induce a transient affective biases and altered mood, these need not result in poor financial decision-making.

【 授权许可】

CC BY