The Association Between Stress and Social Decision-Making

How does stress affect social decision-making? Forming and maintaining social connections is important for health and well-being. Social connections are critical in times of uncertainty and stress, when our capacities are strained and limited and when we thus will benefit from the support of the members of our social network. It is thus surprising how little we know about how stress affects our ability to build and maintain social relationships. On the one hand, stress could positively boost social (decision-making) processes by motivating individuals to seek out others or by facilitating social abilities. On the other hand, stress might impair social connectedness either by increasing self-centredness and social withdrawal or by negatively impacting the abilities we need to establish and maintain social connections. So, does stress help with interacting with others, or does it undermine social connectedness? The proposed project aims to understand how stress and its various forms can influence social learning and social decision-making. This process involves various components, from initial beliefs about the world to learning contingenciesfor example, when we repeatedly interact with the same personto the reevaluation of previously learned impressions when necessary, for example, when people start acting differently from what we expect. Understanding this requires a comprehensive conceptualization of stress and a computational approach to modelling decision-makingwhich allows quantifying biases, learning, and updating of information about others, but crucially also ideas individuals hold about the stability of the world (generally, how much change we expect to occur in interaction-partners). The results of this project will help us to better understand how we make decisions in social contexts, and, in particular, decisions in stressful situations. Stressful situations are often high stakes, and we often rely on others to help us deal with stressors, or indirectly by supporting us during times of strain. Understanding social decision-making in the context of stress will help us to identify risk factorsand/or opportunitiesthat might put individuals at risk for health and well-being.