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).
Highlights
It is a commonplace that we live in a world full of stress
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
We summarize the validation of the stressor included in our experimental design in the following result
Summary
It is a commonplace that we live in a world full of stress. Many of our routine and even some of our major life decisions are made under circumstances that are typically assumed away by the canonical economic model of human decision-making. This study reports 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 situation list, follows the tradition of behavioral and experimental economics, while our experimental design and procedures incorporate elements from medical and psychological research. A number of papers examining decision-making under stress have appeared over the last decade. One stream has appeared in medical journals and the other in scientific publications devoted to behavioral and social sciences, with considerable overlap due to coauthoring and shared methodology. The first (self-proclaimed) study of “the impact of stress on behavior in situations of strategic uncertainty” was carried out by Leder, Hausser and Mojzisch [1].
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