Everyday moral decision-making after acute stress exposure: do social closeness and timing matter?

Effects of gender and personality on everyday moral decision-making after acute stress exposure

“…In a mixed-gender sample (N = 40), Starcke et al (2011) did not observe effects of experimentally-induced stress on everyday moral decision-making, but a correlation between stress-related cortisol increases and egoistic decision-making. By contrast, we investigated solely male samples and found increased altruistic decisionmaking after acute stress exposure compared to control (Singer et al, 2017(Singer et al, , 2020.…”

“…Moreover, it also contains empirical investigations on the effects of acute stress exposure on everyday moral decision-making. On the one hand, the data of the two included between-subjects design studies indicated a prosocial impact of acute stress exposure on everyday moral decisionmaking (Singer et al, 2017 and Study II;Singer et al, 2020). On the other, further withinsubjects investigations in two independent study samples revealed a rather complex interplay between stress, stress hormones, and altruistic decision-making (Study III; Singer et al, 2021).…”

“…Building on the previous findings of my master's thesis (Singer et al, 2017), we hypothesized a higher percentage of altruistic decisions after acute stress exposure compared to a non-stress condition. Additionally, in Study II (see Chapter 5), we examined potential effects of social closeness and timing on everyday moral decisionmaking after acute stress exposure (Singer et al, 2020), due to empirical evidence that social distance and timing of the experimental paradigm relative to stressor onset affect the degree of prosocial behavior. Forty young healthy men were exposed to moderate psychosocial stress by the use of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or its non-stressful 0 SUMMARY placebo version (PTSST) and then responded to the two parallelized item sets of the EMCS Scale at an early (+10 until +30 min) and at a late (+75 until +95 min after (P)TSST exposure) point of measurement.…”

“…Moral decisions are ubiquitous to everyday life and are influenced by various factors (Hofmann et al, 2014(Hofmann et al, , 2018. Among others, psychobiological research suggests that acute stress and stress hormones affect moral decision-making (e.g., Kossowska et al, 2016;Li et al, 2019;Singer et al, 2017Singer et al, , 2020Starcke et al, 2011Youssef et al, 2012).…”

“…However, abstract moral dilemmas lack external and ecological validity and thus cannot be transferred to everyday life (Bauman et al, 2014;. So far, investigating the impact of stress on moral decision-making, only Starcke et al (2011) and Singer et al (2017Singer et al ( , 2020 utilized everyday moral conflict scenarios with altruistic (e.g., helping an old woman who is in distress) versus egoistic (e.g., catching the waiting bus home) response alternatives. In a mixed-gender sample (N = 40), Starcke et al (2011) did not observe effects of experimentally-induced stress on everyday moral decision-making, but a correlation between stress-related cortisol increases and egoistic decision-making.…”