Hamilton – Stress made Harvard University undergraduate students relatively oblivious to the long-term consequences of their actions, revealed a study conducted by a researcher there.
Both stress and short-term/long-term tradeoffs in decision making are pervasive and important in business, politics, and everyday life. For example, managing budgets and social relationships, maintaining health, and raising children all involve dealing with such tradeoffs, and doing so repeatedly over time. The cumulative pattern is usually far more important than the short-term outcomes. The study, by Jeremy R. Gray, a graduate student in cognitive neuroscience at Harvard University, showed that stress causes people to consider a short-term outcome as a priority, even when there is a tangible cost to a cumulative or ‘big picture’ outcome. Results will be published in the January 1999 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal published at ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ.
Students were given a computerized task and were instructed to figure out how it worked. All choices were simple and exactly the same: Which computer response key is better to choose now, the one on the right or the one on the left’ Each choice influenced the amount of money earned on that trial. The first 100 trials were counted as practice. Given so much practice, one might think the students would have easily earned all the money. However, the students had to figure out that one key worked like a good investment (pay now, and collect double later), and the other key worked like a bad credit card (play now, pay for it double later). Participants made the same choice more than 130 times and, despite ample opportunity to learn, came to favor the short-term option.
The results showed that students who were experiencing stress over impending final exams preferred the ‘bad’ key. They not only earned less money than students who were relaxed about their exams, but also earned less than if they had been guessing randomly. They were not just unmotivated or unable to concentrate ‘ they were actually slightly faster at responding on each trial.
To eliminate alternative explanations, such as the possibility that the stressed students were just not as gifted and therefore ended up feeling stressed about exams, a further experiment in which subjects were randomly given a different kind of stressor was conducted. Students viewed either emotionally aversive, graphic pictures or emotionally neutral pictures as part of the task. As expected, the students seeing the unpleasant pictures earned less than those seeing neutral pictures, supporting the previous results.
The research did not document a way to overcome the short-term thinking that stress induces. However, knowledge is half the battle. Awareness of proclivity toward such distortions of rationality can help people evaluate their priorities ‘ Do I want to do something because it is really best, or does it just seem that way just because I feel stressed and it seems best right now’ Whether the choice is as dramatic as taking major financial, political, or even military action, or as close to home as whether to exercise, have another cigarette, or spend more time with the children, understanding how stress influences priorities and decision making is important.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, currently under the editorship of John F. Dovidio, Charles A. Dana professor of psychology at ¸Ô±¾ÊÓƵ, is one of the flagship journals of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. ‘One of the objectives of the society, and therefore of the journal,’ says Dovidio, ‘is to increase public awareness of the relevance of social behavioral science to the lives and welfare of people in general.’
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Contact: Jeremy R. Gray, Harvard University
617-547-8915)