Stress reduces loss aversion without increasing reward-cue attentional salience

Abstract

Abstract Attentional and evaluative decision biases both shape motivated behavior, yet their interplay under acute stress remains unclear. We tested whether acute psychosocial stress affects loss aversion and reward-cue attentional salience. Sixty-one healthy adults completed the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (stress vs. control, between-subjects design), a mixed-gambling task to estimate loss aversion (λ) while conditioning cue-outcome associations, and a visual search task probing attentional salience of the conditioned cues, with concurrent autonomic and endocrine recording. Participants in the stress condition showed reduced loss aversion, attenuating the typical overweighting of losses relative to gains. By contrast, reward-associated cues reliably biased visual search, but this attentional capture did not differ by condition. Manipulation checks indicated heterogeneous physiological reactivity, which limits strong inferences about the null attentional effect. Overall, the findings are consistent with stress-related changes in evaluative weighting emerging more readily than changes in cue-driven attention under the present protocol. They further suggest that reductions in loss aversion do not necessarily require a measurable increase in reward-cue salience. Implications for understanding stress-related risky behaviors and the persistence of maladaptive cue-driven responses are discussed.