This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: People who tackled arithmetic problems while stressed by a countdown clock, error buzzers and an observer nearby later gave potential losses less weight when deciding whether to accept a gamble. This finding from a new study suggests that pressure may change the balance between how people perceive what they could stand to gain and what they could lose.
Matteo De Tommaso of the University of Milano-Bicocca and colleagues describe the experiment in their paper published in Motivation and Emotion. The results are tentative, partly because the attempt to induce stress produced an uneven response. The researchers randomly assigned 61 healthy adults to two groups.
Both solved arithmetic problems, but one faced a countdown, sounds and close observation, along with a progress bar showing a potential bonus. Immediately afterward, participants accepted or rejected 64 gambles. Each offered an equal chance of gaining or losing specified amounts of points.
Participants were told that selected bets would determine a monetary bonus. Examining their choices allowed the researchers to estimate loss aversion—the tendency to give a possible loss more weight than an equivalent gain. Someone with strong loss aversion needs a considerably larger upside before a gamble looks worthwhile.
Among the 59 participants whose choices could be analyzed, the pressure group gave losses roughly 1.7 times the weight of gains, compared with about 2.4 times in the control group. Losses still carried more weight in both groups; the difference was in how much. The statistical evidence was modest.
The difference passed the study's conventional threshold but would not survive a stricter check that would account for its multiple outcomes. While participants considered the bets, they were also encountering a second kind of information. Possible wins and losses appeared inside differently colored rings, allowing each color to become associated with a prospect.
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