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Stress, Uncertainty and Decision Confidence

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Abstract

We successfully manipulated decision confidence in a probabilistic prediction task by means of stress as induced by excessive cognitive demands. In particular, our results indicate that decisions (based on high and low, but not intermediate levels of uncertainty) made under stress (confirmed by skin conductance measures) are associated with increased confidence when outcome probabilities are incompletely known (20% residual uncertainty). A different pattern was found when outcome probabilities were completely known (0% residual uncertainty). Here, stress led to decreased decision confidence when decisions were associated with intermediate levels of uncertainty but had no effect in case of high and low levels of uncertainty. In addition we provide evidence for ambiguity—(understood as implicit-risk) assessment being impaired under stress conditions.

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Acknowledgments

We want to thank Nikolaus Scholik from Hogrefe Austria for providing us with the physiological recording device Nexus 10 produced by Mind Media (BV).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vienna University, Faculty of Psychology, Institute of Clinical, Biological and Differential Psychology, Biological Psychology Unit, Liebiggasse 5, 1010, Vienna, Austria

    J. Heereman & P. Walla

  2. School of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Information Technology, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, 2308, Australia

    P. Walla

  3. Neuroconsult, Applied Neuroscience, Günthergasse 3/3, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    P. Walla

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  1. J. Heereman
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  2. P. Walla
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Correspondence to P. Walla.

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Heereman, J., Walla, P. Stress, Uncertainty and Decision Confidence. Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback 36, 273–279 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10484-011-9167-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10484-011-9167-9

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