Sometimes thinking is a luxury. In extreme situations – for example, if you are attacked by a bear – there is no time to analyze all the options and you follow your first instinct (to run, normally). The anxiety generated in this and other similar circumstances pushes us to make quick decisions. When there is a real danger, it is the most efficient. Otherwise, thought and reflection work better.
To study the effects of stress on decision-making, researchers placed electrodes on the hands of a group of participants that they activated from time to time at random while they presented analogies that they had to solve . For example: butter is to margarine like sugar is to … beets, saccharin, honey, chocolate? Compared to other participants who were not shocked, the former tended to respond quickly without even going through all the options, thus failing more often.
The effects of stress depend on the amount of cortisol that is released in the brain.
A team of researchers gave study participants either a drug that activated the production of this hormone or a placebo, and then subjected them to the so-called cognitive reflection test (CRT). This test raises three questions that prompt you to give an intuitive but incorrect answer. For example: a pencil and an eraser cost 1.10 euros in total. If the pencil costs 1 euro more than the rubber, how much does it cost? The natural thing is to answer 10 cents immediately, but if you take five seconds to do a simple calculation, you will see that the pencil costs 1.05 and the eraser 5 cents. Few people, not even those with higher education, got all three right, but those who answered under the influence of excess cortisol failed even more.
The truth is that stress encourages heuristic thinking and the ability to give quick responses, but as we see it incapacitates more sophisticated cognitive processing. On the contrary, sadness and melancholy push us to use analytical and reflective thinking. Perhaps in this state it is worth concentrating to try to solve problems.
