Schedule of Events | Symposia

The effect of acute stress on mental effort allocation across motivational contexts

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Tony El Nemer¹ (tony_el_nemer@brown.edu), Ziwei Cheng², Chanel Johnson¹, Joonhwa Kim¹, Amitai Shenhav²; ¹Brown University, ²University of California, Berkeley

Both positive and negative incentives shape one’s motivation to invest cognitive effort in a task. However, the role of stress in shaping this process remains under-explored. Here, we performed a preliminary examination of the influence of acute stress on cognitive control allocation across motivational contexts. Participants underwent either a stress-inducing (N=22) or neutral (N=23) version of a cold-pressor task, followed by an incentivized cognitive control task. The task independently varied levels of positive reinforcement (monetary reward per correct response), negative reinforcement (loss for failing to perform well), and punishment (monetary loss for performing poorly). Participants responded more efficiently (e.g., faster) for larger potential reinforcements (positive or negative) and more cautiously (e.g., more accurate) for larger potential punishment (ps < 0.001). Acute stress attenuated the effect of reinforcement on speeding (p < 0.05) and had a qualitatively similar but non-significant impact on punishment-related increases in accuracy (p > 0.06). These findings provide initial evidence that acute stress reduces incentive salience in positive and negative reinforcement contexts, offering insights into how stress influences incentive evaluation and control allocation across motivational contexts.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Monitoring & inhibitory control