Effects of Anticipatory Stress on Decision Making in a Gambling Task
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Date
2007
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
American Psychological Association
Abstract
Recent research has highlighted the fact that emotion that is intrinsic to a task benefits decision making.
The authors tested the converse hypothesis, that unrelated emotion disrupts decision making. Participants
played the Iowa Gambling Task, during which only experimental participants anticipated giving a public
speech (A. Bechara, D. Tranel, & H. Damasio, 2000). Experimental participants who were anticipating
the speech learned the contingencies of the choices more slowly, and there was a gender interaction later
in the game, with stressed female participants having more explicit knowledge and more advantageous
performance and stressed male participants having poorer explicit knowledge and less advantageous
performance. Effects of anticipatory stress on decision making are complex and depend on both the
nature of the task and the individual.