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This work was supported by the Generalitat Valenciana under Grant ACIF/2020/062.

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Ayuso, CarlaAuthor

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Emotional stress & decision-making: an emotional stressor significantly reduces loss aversion

Publicated to:Stress-The International Journal On The Biology Of Stress. 24 (6): 780-786 - 2021-05-05 24(6), DOI: 10.1080/10253890.2021.1919617

Authors: Molins, Francisco; Ayuso, Carla; Serrano, Miguel Angel

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Abstract

Stress influences loss aversion, the principle that losses loom larger than gains, although the nature of this relationship is unclear. Studies show that stress reduces loss aversion; however, stress response has been only studied by means of physiological measures, but the stressor emotional impact remained unclear. Since emotions can modify stress response and increase the activity of the loss aversion neural substrates, it could be expected that an emotional stressor may produce the opposite effect, i.e. loss aversion increase. 69 participants were divided into experimental and control group. The first one was exposed to emotional stress through a 5-minutes video, and control group viewed a match-length distractor video. Physiological stress response was assessed by means of electrodermal activity (EDA), and both perceived stress, and negative affect (i.e. psychological stress response) were registered through questionnaires. Both groups performed a mixed gamble task, which allowed the extraction of loss aversion through a Bayesian-computational model. During and after video, experimental group had higher electrodermal activity, perceived stress, and negative affect than controls, suggesting that emotional stress induction was effective. However, rather than increasing, loss aversion of stressed participants was lower. These results constitute a new evidence of emotional stress influencing loss aversion and highlight that stress, regardless of its emotional impact, can reduce this phenomenon. These results should be considered when predicting risky decisions.

Keywords

Bayes theoremCognitive controlCortisoDecision makingDecision-makingEmotionEmotional stress computational modeEmotional stress computational modelEmotionsHumansIndividualsLoss aversionNeural basisNoradrenergic activityPsychological distressReactivityResponsesStressStress, psychological

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Stress-The International Journal On The Biology Of Stress due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency WoS (JCR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2021, it was in position 23/53, thus managing to position itself as a Q2 (Segundo Cuartil), in the category Behavioral Sciences. Notably, the journal is positioned en el Cuartil Q2 para la agencia Scopus (SJR) en la categoría Psychiatry and Mental Health.

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) of the Dimensions source, it yields a value of: 4.06, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: Dimensions Jun 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-06-07, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 9
  • Scopus: 10
  • Europe PMC: 4
  • OpenCitations: 8

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-06-07:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 70.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 68 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 0.5.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 1 (Altmetric).