Exposure to acute stress enhances decision-making competence: Evidence for the role of DHEA
Introduction
Understanding the effects of stress on decision-making has important implications for society, the workplace, and family life, given the importance of decision-making in all of these domains (Parker et al., 2015). In this paper we sought to examine whether acute stress influenced the ability to make better real-world decisions—decision-making competence—and what the potential biological correlates of this effect might be.
Prior stress and decision-making research in humans has largely examined individual components of decision-making (for reviews, see Schwabe and Wolf, 2011, Starcke and Brand, 2012), such as goal-directedness or risk taking. Although understanding these effects is important, decision-making researchers have noted the poor ecological validity of investigating decision-making components in isolation (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007). Actual decisions made in everyday life are a complex integration of multiple decision-making processes, and influences on one of these processes may influence other decision-making processes, leading to a different decision than might be expected by only examining individual processes. Thus, it is unknown how stress might influence ecologically valid measures of decision-making abilities.
The development of new, performance-based, measures of decision-making provides an approach for assessing “decision-making competence” or real-world decision-making ability (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007). In the gold standard of these measures, the Adult Decision-Making Competence (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007), participants make a number of decisions related to real-world situations (e.g., recognizing social norms, resistance to framing) that have an objectively correct choice, unlike other decision-making tasks where there is no “correct” choice, such as tasks assessing risk-taking or habit. Measures of decision-making competence require participants to make decisions that assess the processes (e.g., value assessment, metacognition) that contribute to better real-world decision-making. These decisions contribute to an overall score of decision-making competence.
The measure of decision-making competence we used in this study is ecologically valid, as it inversely predicts a host of poor decisions and resultant negative life events—such as having an unplanned pregnancy, quitting a job one has had for less than a week, or being incarcerated overnight (Parker et al., 2015). Although many factors play into adverse outcomes, decision-making competence remains a significant predictor of those decisions even when adjusting for factors such as socioeconomic status (Parker et al., 2015). Thus, the relatively new ability to assess decision-making competence now allows us to examine what effects, if any, stress has on the decision-making ability underpinning decisions made in everyday life.
How should stress influence decision-making? Introspection might suggest that stress impairs decision-making, and there is some evidence supporting this idea. For example, acute stress increases habitual behaviors and correspondingly reduces goal-directed actions (Schwabe and Wolf, 2011), which could suggest a diminished capacity to make beneficial decisions. Second, although this does not necessarily imply worse decision-making, acute stress increases risky decision-making (Starcke and Brand, 2012), which could suggest a decrease in error monitoring processes.
In contrast, alternate lines of research suggest that acute stress may enhance decision-making competence. First, stress induces negative affect, and negative affect promotes an analytical style of information processing (Moons and Mackie, 2007); analytic information processing in turn promotes better decision-making competence (Finucane and Gullion, 2010). Second, acute stress enhances inhibitory control (Schwabe et al., 2013), which is an executive function partially underpinning decision-making competence (Del Missier et al., 2012); thus, acute stress may enhance decision-making competence by improving inhibition. However, like evidence suggesting stress may impair decision-making competence, the above is limited to studies examining relatively restricted cognitive processes, and it is not known how stress impacts decision-making competence as a whole.
To elucidate the biological correlates of potential stress effects on decision-making competence, we examined the hormones cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). We chose to examine these hormones because they both increase in response to the stressor employed in this study (Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004, Lennartsson et al., 2012b) and modulate receptors on neurons (e.g., GR, GABAA, σ1) that are expressed in brain circuits supporting decision-making (Butts et al., 2011, Pérez-Neri et al., 2008). In addition, both of these hormones causally influence decision-making processes (Ohana et al., 2015, Putman et al., 2010). Thus, given the neural and behavioral evidence suggesting that these hormones should exert important modulatory effects on decision-making, we chose to examine the relation of these hormones with decision-making competence.
DHEA and cortisol act through different pathways to influence neural and cognitive processes. For example, DHEA can influence neural activity by binding to GABAA receptors (Majewska et al., 1990), whereas cortisol influences neural activity through actions at glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors (Patel et al., 2008). DHEA is also a neurosteroid present within brain regions supportive of decision-making (Kancheva et al., 2011, Maninger et al., 2009). These different mechanisms of action produce different cognitive effects (e.g., Davis et al., 2008, Shields et al., 2015); for example, DHEA administration reduces risk-taking in decision-making in individuals enrolled in an addiction recovery program (Ohana et al., 2015), whereas cortisol administration increases risk-taking in decision-making in healthy individuals (Putman et al., 2010).
Determining whether the effects of stress on decision-making are related to cortisol or DHEA could provide important insights into the underlying mechanisms of these effects. Because of their high covariance with stress, reactivity of both hormones should associate with decision-making competence. However, because cortisol tends to impair cognitive processes, if acute stress decreases decision-making competence, we might expect that cortisol reactivity would predict decision-making competence better than DHEA reactivity. Conversely, because DHEA tends to enhance cognitive processes, if acute stress increases decision-making competence, we might expect that DHEA reactivity would predict decision-making competence better than cortisol reactivity.
To elucidate the effects of acute stress on decision-making ability underpinning better real-world decision-making, we assigned a large sample of young adults to well-validated stress induction or control conditions. This was followed by a decision-making index designed to measure real world decision-making competence. In addition, we collected baseline and post-manipulation saliva samples to examine levels of cortisol and DHEA, focusing on participants in the stress group, in order to assess the hormonal responses underlying these behavioral effects.
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 124 healthy young adults attending the University of California, Davis. Five participants were excluded from analyses due to misunderstanding the instructions. We did not invite participants who had a current illness, diabetes, history of stroke, neurological disorders, current or former diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder, hospitalization for a psychiatric disorder within the past year, current injury or illness within the past week, major sleep disturbances within the
Stress appraisals
We first assessed whether participants in the stress induction condition perceived the stress manipulation to be more stressful than did participants in the control condition. As hypothesized, participants in the stress induction condition rated the stress manipulation to be significantly more stressful than participants in the control condition, F(1,119.0) = 71.95, p < .001 (Fig. 2(A)).
Negative affect
We next assessed whether participants in the stress induction condition evidenced an increase in negative affect
Discussion
Little is known about how acute stress influences the ability to make better decisions in everyday life. We addressed that gap in the present study by using a gold-standard laboratory manipulation of acute stress and subsequently assessed decision-making competence in stress and control groups while also collecting saliva samples to assay stress-reactive hormones with cognitive effects. We found, perhaps counterintuitively, that acute stress actually enhanced the ability to make better
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest in this work.
Funding
The funding sources were in no way a part of this research.
Contributors
GSS designed the study, conducted half of the cortisol and DHEA assays, analyzed the data, and wrote and revised the manuscript. JCWL conducted half of the cortisol and DHEA assays and provided minor revisions to the manuscript. BCT supervised the cortisol and DHEA assays and provided critical revisions to the manuscript. APY provided critical revisions to the manuscript.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a University of California, Davis Psychology Department Summer Grant in Aid of Research to Grant S. Shields, NIH MH103322 to Brian C. Trainor, a University of California, Davis Provost’s Undergraduate Fellowship to Jovian C. W. Lam, and NIH MH059352 to Andrew Yonelinas. The authors wish to thank numerous research assistants for assistance with data collection.
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