How Stress Affects Our Judgement

Some of the most important decisions of our lives occur while we’re feeling stressed and anxious. From medical decisions to financial and professional ones, we are all sometimes required to weigh up information under stressful conditions. But do we become better or worse at processing and using information under such circumstances? My colleague and I, both neuroscientists, wanted to investigate how the mind operates under stress, so we visited some local fire stations. Firefighters’ workdays vary quite a bit. Some are pretty relaxed, they’ll spend their time washing the truck, cleaning equipment, cooking meals and reading. Other days can be hectic, with numerous life-threatening incidents to attend to, they’ll enter burning homes to rescue trapped residents, and assist with medical emergencies. These ups and downs presented the perfect setting for an experiment on how people’s ability to use information changes when they feel under pressure. We found that perceived threat acted as a trigger for a stress reaction that made the task of processing information easier for the firefighters – but only as long as it conveyed bad news. This is how we arrived at these results. We asked the firefighters to estimate their likelihood of experiencing 40 different adverse events in their life, such as being involved in an accident or becoming a victim of card fraud. We then gave them either good news (that their likelihood of experiencing these events was lower than they’d thought) or bad news (that it was higher) and asked them to provide new estimates. People are normally quite…