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The Association Between the Stress Hormone Cortisol and Decision-making

NCT07702747 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 116

Last updated 2026-07-14

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The goal of this study is to learn how acute psychosocial stress influences decision-making in healthy young adults. It will also examine whether cortisol reactivity, a biological stress response, changes the influence of physiological emotional signals on decision-making (i.e., the gut feeling indicating risks).

The main questions it aims to answer are:

1. Does exposure to an acute psychosocial stressor affect the development of physiological emotional signals during decision-making?
2. Does cortisol reactivity moderate the relationship between physiological emotional signals and decision-making?
3. Are there sex differences in these relationships?

Researchers will compare participants exposed to a standardized psychosocial stress procedure, with participants exposed to a non-stressful control condition.

Participants will:

1. Be randomly assigned to either a psychosocial stress condition or a control condition.
2. Complete a gambling decision-making task following the experimental manipulation.
3. Provide multiple saliva samples and subjective stress ratings throughout the session to assess stress reactivity.
4. Undergo continuous electrodermal activity recording during the decision-making task to measure physiological emotional signals.

Conditions

  • Healthy Young Adults

Interventions

OTHER

Trier Social Stress Test

Participants completed a slightly modified version of the Trier Social Stress Task (TSST), a validated psychosocial stress induction protocol. The protocol involved a 10-minute anticipation period followed by a 10-minute test phase: a 5-minute mock job interview and a 5-minute surprise mental arithmetic task. During the test phase, participants stood in front of a one-way mirror ("Panel-out" version) and were told they were being observed by behavioral analysts and recorded via camera, although no recording took place and the analysts were lab confederates.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Marie-France Marin

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
OTHER
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
35 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2021-09-13
Primary Completion
2024-11-07
Completion
2024-11-07

Countries

  • Canada

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT07702747 on ClinicalTrials.gov