The Association Between the Stress Hormone Cortisol and Decision-making

Marie-France Marin116 enrolled

Overview

The goal of this study is to learn how acute psychosocial stress influences decision-making in healthy young adults. It will also examine whether cortisol reactivity, a biological stress response, changes the influence of physiological emotional signals on decision-making (i.e., the gut feeling indicating risks). The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. Does exposure to an acute psychosocial stressor affect the development of physiological emotional signals during decision-making? 2. Does cortisol reactivity moderate the relationship between physiological emotional signals and decision-making? 3. Are there sex differences in these relationships? Researchers will compare participants exposed to a standardized psychosocial stress procedure, with participants exposed to a non-stressful control condition. Participants will: 1. Be randomly assigned to either a psychosocial stress condition or a control condition. 2. Complete a gambling decision-making task following the experimental manipulation. 3. Provide multiple saliva samples and subjective stress ratings throughout the session to assess stress reactivity. 4. Undergo continuous electrodermal activity recording during the decision-making task to measure physiological emotional signals.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

SINGLE

Enrollment

116

Conditions

Healthy Young Adults

Trier Social Stress TestOTHER

Participants completed a slightly modified version of the Trier Social Stress Task (TSST), a validated psychosocial stress induction protocol. The protocol involved a 10-minute anticipation period followed by a 10-minute test phase: a 5-minute mock job interview and a 5-minute surprise mental arithmetic task. During the test phase, participants stood in front of a one-way mirror ("Panel-out" version) and were told they were being observed by behavioral analysts and recorded via camera, although no recording took place and the analysts were lab confederates.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 YearsMax age: 35 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Adult aged 18-35 years old. Exclusion Criteria: * Current or past psychiatric/neurodevelopmental disorders * Physical illness * Medication use (except hormonal contraception) * Alcohol consumption exceeding Health Canada guidelines (\>10 drinks/week for women, \>15 for men) * Smoking more than 7 cigarettes/day.

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Decision-making as assessed by the Iowa Gambling Task (probability of drawing from the risky decks vs safe decks)

Decision-making was assessed using the Iowa Gambling Task. In this task, participants need to draw 100 cards among 4 decks offering different win-loss contingencies. Some card decks are risky (large gains and losses), whereas some are safe (small gains and losses). The dependent variable was a binary variable indicating whether the participant drew a card from the risky (coded as 1) or the safe decks (coded as 0).

Time frame: Immediately after completing the experimental condition (Stress or control condition)

Secondary Outcomes

Difference in cortisol levels between the two conditions.

Cortisol (ug/dL) was quantified for six saliva samples in each condition (Stress or control).

Time frame: Baseline (just before the experimental condition is conducted), 10, 20, 50, 60, 70 minutes after the beginning of the experimental condition.