Acute stress impairs reward learning in men

Abstract Acute stress is ubiquitous in everyday life, but the extent to which acute stress affects how people learn from the outcomes of their choices is still poorly understood. Here, we investigate how acute stress impacts reward and punishment learning in men using a reinforcement-learning task. Sixty-two male participants performed the task whilst under stress and control conditions. We observed that acute stress impaired participants’ choice performance towards monetary gains, but not losses. To unravel the mechanism(s) underlying such impairment, we fitted a reinforcement-learning model to participants’ trial-by-trial choices. Computational modeling indicated that under acute stress participants learned more slowly from positive prediction errors — when the outcomes were better than expected — consistent with stress-induced dopamine disruptions. Such mechanistic understanding of how acute stress impairs reward learning is particularly important given the pervasiveness of stress in our daily life and the impact that stress can have on our wellbeing and mental health.