Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour.
Elife
; 122024 Jan 05.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38180785
ABSTRACT
Acute stress can change our cognition and emotions, but what specific consequences this has for human prosocial behaviour is unclear. Previous studies have mainly investigated prosociality with financial transfers in economic games and produced conflicting results. Yet a core feature of many types of prosocial behaviour is that they are effortful. We therefore examined how acute stress changes our willingness to exert effort that benefits others. Healthy male participants - half of whom were put under acute stress - made decisions whether to exert physical effort to gain money for themselves or another person. With this design, we could independently assess the effects of acute stress on prosocial, compared to self-benefitting, effortful behaviour. Compared to controls (n = 45), participants in the stress group (n = 46) chose to exert effort more often for self- than for other-benefitting rewards at a low level of effort. Additionally, the adverse effects of stress on prosocial effort were particularly pronounced in more selfish participants. Neuroimaging combined with computational modelling revealed a putative neural mechanism underlying these effects more stressed participants showed increased activation to subjective value in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula when they themselves could benefit from their exerted effort relative to when someone else could. By using an effort-based task that better approximates real-life prosocial behaviour and incorporating trait differences in prosocial tendencies, our study provides important insights into how acute stress affects prosociality and its associated neural mechanisms.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Efeitos Colaterais e Reações Adversas Relacionados a Medicamentos
/
Altruísmo
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
Limite:
Humans
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Male
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2024
Tipo de documento:
Article