Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Acute stress triggers a cascade of physiological and psychological changes including heightened cortisol levels, perspiration, and anxiety. Existing research has focused on acute stress's effect on cognition in basic tasks of executive functioning, but its effect on computationally harder tasks is not well understood. Here, in a within-participants laboratory experiment (n=42, mostly college students), we test for an effect of acute stress on decision-making at varying levels of computational hardness in the 0-1 Knapsack Decision Problem. We find that acute stress, induced via the Trier Social Stress Test, leads to impaired decision quality irrespective of the level of computational hardness. Among cortisol responders, higher cortisol levels were associated with lower decision quality and higher time on task. Our findings help bridge the gap between research on executive functioning tasks and `real-world decisions', building a more nuanced understanding of how acute stress affects decision-making.