When life’s weight bears down, people tend to roll the dice harder. According to a fresh inquiry by scholars at the University of Arkansas—published in Psychoneuroendocrinology—the driving catalyst behind this behavioral pivot is a marked decline in what’s known as loss aversion.
Loss aversion refers to that ingrained human reflex: the sting of losing hits far harder than the thrill of gaining. In lay terms, misplacing a $100 bill cuts deeper than the delight of stumbling upon one.
But that’s not all. The researchers unearthed something even more telling—stress doesn’t treat everyone the same. It rearranges men’s choices more drastically, tipping their judgment further than women’s. Interestingly, under pressure, women seem to sharpen their foresight regarding possible outcomes, whereas men become more aware of the eventual result those decisions will trigger.
“I can tell you from my own experience, when I’m stressed, I pause before making a choice that could backfire,” remarked Grant Shields, assistant professor of psychological science and lead architect of the research, according to medicalxpress.com.
The study also credits co-authors Zach Gray, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology, and Trey Malone, once a U of A agricultural economist and now at Purdue University.
Money on the Line, Minds in Flux
In the experiment, 147 individuals were deliberately stressed and then prompted to navigate make-believe financial dilemmas.
“Money risk is easy to wrap your head around—most folks have a solid grip on how they’d handle their own cash,” Shields noted. “What I set out to do was dissect the deeper gears turning inside those choices.”
To understand those gears, the team turned to cumulative prospect theory, a framework in behavioral economics suggesting that decision-making is stirred by four ingredients:
- Loss aversion (fear of losing),
- Risk aversion (hesitance to take chances),
- Stochasticity (the randomness baked into our selections), and
- Probability distortion (our flawed habit of overhyping unlikely outcomes and downplaying likely ones).
Take lotteries, for instance—people obsess over the glimmer of victory, despite knowing the odds are bleak. That skewed focus is a textbook case of probability distortion.
While economists have long embraced cumulative prospect theory, fewer have turned a lens toward how stress tweaks these levers, as per medicalxpress.com.
Why This Risky Tilt Might Be Hardwired
In the chaos of the modern world, reacting to stress with bolder moves may seem unwise. But Shields suggests this might be a leftover instinct.
“If you’re a creature being hunted, standing still could mean doom. In such moments, making a wild choice might just be the only move that saves your skin.”