Shine OnStressed? Be careful making decisions
Stress. It often worsens when we're faced with big decisions. A new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science is warning us that stress skews our decision-making ability, possibly setting us up for making poor choices.
Stressed brains aren't the more rational ones. We're more likely to smooth over the past and make assumptions that everything will work out fine when we're stressed, essentially changing the way we weigh risk and reward.
It sounds contradictory, that we would assume the best in stressful situations. But the study found it to be true:
"Stress seems to help people learn from positive feedback and impairs their learning from negative feedback," said co-author Mara Mather of the University of Southern California.
A stress-decision example in Science Daily is the decision to change jobs. Under stress, you're more likely to pay attention to the positives, weighing a higher salary over downsides like a bad commute.
[See also: Sleeping can help fight stress]
Mather says this skewed thinking also plays a role in addiction, with the high of the reward weighing more than the dangers of the habit.
The study also found that stress can make men risk-takers — and faster decision makers — while women typically take longer to decide and opt to play it safe.
"We almost never see gender differences in our lab, but these gender differences were really striking…In these studies we found males and females didn't differ in laboratory tasks when they weren't under stress. But when they were under stress they diverged," Mather said.
Stress isn't necessarily always a bad thing — here are some ways stress helps your well-being — nor do we always have the time or opportunity to de-stress before making important time-sensitive decisions.
So how do you approach decision-making when you're overwhelmed?
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