Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Cortisol shifts financial risk preferences.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A multinational analysis of how emotions relate to economic decisions regarding time or risk.Nature human behaviour · 2024Pooled it
- Reducing debt improves psychological functioning and changes decision-making in the poor.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Trial
- Dopamine Receptor-Specific Contributions to the Computation of Value.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2018Trial
- Combined Effects of Glucocorticoid and Noradrenergic Activity on Loss Aversion.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2018Trial
- Personality, Executive Control, and Neurobiological Characteristics Associated with Different Forms of Risky Driving.PloS one · 2016Trial
- Sleep Architecture and Risk-Taking in Adolescents and Young Adults: Independent Contributions of REM Sleep, Sigma Activity, and Morning Cortisol.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Opposing Roles of Testosterone and Cortisol in Prosocial Risk-Taking.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Willingness to wait covaries with endogenous variation in cortisol.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Trait Anxiety Leads to "Better" Performance? A Study on Acute Stress and Uncertain Decision-Making.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Foraging in a non-foraging task: Fitness maximization explains human risk preference dynamics under changing environment.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Effects of a fearful emotional state on financial decisions in the presence of prior outcome information.Journal Of Economic Psychology · 2024Article
- Risk aversion, impatience, and adoption of conservation agriculture practices among smallholders in Zambia.Heliyon · 2024Article
- Distinct developmental trajectories for risky and impulsive decision-making in chimpanzees.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2023Article
- Attachment-Related Differences in Emotion Regulation in Adults: A Systematic Review on Attachment Representations.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- Decision-Making and Risk-Propensity Changes during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic Lockdown.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Risk taking for potential losses but not gains increases with time of day.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Does the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown affect risk attitudes?-Evidence from rural Thailand.PloS one · 2023Article
- Resting-state heart rate variability (HRV) mediates the association between perceived chronic stress and ambiguity avoidance.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Adolescents take more risks on days they have high diurnal cortisol or emotional distress.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Risk taking is central to human activity. Consequently, it lies at the focal point of behavioral sciences such as neuroscience, economics, and finance. Many influential models from these sciences assume that financial risk preferences form a stable trait. Is this assumption justified and, if not, what causes the appetite for risk to fluctuate? We have previously found that traders experience a sustained increase in the stress hormone cortisol when the amount of uncertainty, in the form of market volatility, increases. Here we ask whether these elevated cortisol levels shift risk preferences. Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over protocol we raised cortisol levels in volunteers over 8 d to the same extent previously observed in traders. We then tested for the utility and probability weighting functions underlying their risk taking and found that participants became more risk-averse. We also observed that the weighting of probabilities became more distorted among men relative to women. These results suggest that risk preferences are highly dynamic. Specifically, the stress response calibrates risk taking to our circumstances, reducing it in times of prolonged uncertainty, such as a financial crisis. Physiology-induced shifts in risk preferences may thus be an underappreciated cause of market instability.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.