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Journal Article

Citation

FeldmanHall O, Raio CM, Kubota JT, Seiler MG, Phelps EA. Psychol. Sci. 2015; 26(12): 1918-1926.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, New York University Center for Neural Science, New York University Nathan Kline Institute, Orangeburg, New York liz.phelps@nyu.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797615605807

PMID

26546080

Abstract

Uncertainty preferences are typically studied in neutral, nonsocial contexts. This approach, however, fails to capture the dynamic factors that influence choices under uncertainty in the real world. Our goal was twofold: to test whether uncertainty valuation is similar across social and nonsocial contexts, and to investigate the effects of acute stress on uncertainty preferences. Subjects completed matched gambling and trust games following either a control or a stress manipulation. Those who were not under stress exhibited no differences between the amount of money gambled and the amount of money entrusted to partners. In comparison, stressed subjects gambled more money but entrusted less money to partners. We further found that irrespective of stress, subjects were highly attuned to irrelevant feedback in the nonsocial, gambling context, believing that every loss led to a greater chance of winning (the gamblers' fallacy). However, when deciding to trust a stranger, control subjects behaved rationally, treating each new interaction as independent. Stress compromised this adaptive behavior, increasing sensitivity to irrelevant social feedback.


Language: en

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