Economic Status and Decision-Making Behavior: The Cost of Cognitive Control

Abstract

Economic poverty entails material deprivation and life unpredictability, imposing heavier external constraints on low-income individuals’ goal pursuit than on their higher-income counterparts. We hypothesized that relative economic disadvantage fosters situation-driven decision-making among lower-income groups, which consumes cognitive resources and may impair performance in other cognitive domains. Two experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 (n = 41) used a pre/post Stroop task design around a product choice task to examine cognitive control changes; Experiment 2 (N = 903, online) examined decision-making tendencies using a similar product choice task. In Experiment 1, income percentile was marginally and negatively associated with post-task cognitive-control decline (i.e., lower-income participants tended to show greater decline) (β = −0.31, p = 0.05) and was not significantly correlated with decoy susceptibility (ρ = −0.23, p = 0.15); the directions of both associations were consistent with our predictions. Because the sample was small and the study was explicitly exploratory, these results should be regarded as preliminary rather than conclusive. Experiment 2 showed that lower-income participants showed significantly higher decoy susceptibility (β = −0.22, p < 0.001) and significantly slower decisions (β = −0.24, p < 0.001). Taken together, the well-powered results of Experiment 2, together with the directionally consistent pattern of Experiment 1, indicate that economic disadvantage is associated with greater reliance on external contextual cues and greater cognitive expenditure during decision-making. Because Experiment 2 did not include a direct measure of cognitive control, whether such decision styles in turn impair subsequent cognitive control awaits direct testing.