Author ORCID Identifier:
Date of Graduation
5-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
Psychological Science
Advisor/Mentor
Shields, Grant
Committee Member
Bridges, Ana
Second Committee Member
Brown, Mitch
Keywords
acute stress; goal-directed decision-making; habitual decision-making; heuristics; political decision-making
Abstract
Acute stress is known to influence decision-making processes at multiple levels, including a prioritization of simplified strategies and increased sensitivity to salient cues. However, no work to date has examined the effects of manipulating acute stress in the context of political decision-making. To address this gap, I created a novel, dynamic simulated voting task that would generate mismatches between the party label and ideology of political candidates. Participants (N = 137) were randomly assigned to either a stress induction via the group variation of the Trier Social Stress Test (n = 75) or a control task (n = 62) and completed the voting task. It was found that stress did indeed exert a main effect on political decision-making, shifting it toward more heuristic (i.e., label-based) voting. However, the effects of stress were not uniform, such that there was a significant participant self-identified political affiliation by stress condition interaction: Relative to the nonstressful condition, Republicans under stress increased in their party-label voting, whereas Democrats under stress decreased in their party-label voting. Additionally, exploratory drift diffusion modeling analyses indicated that the underlying decision-making processes changed under stress and by party affiliation. These results are the first to show that acute stress impacts how individuals make political choices, and suggest that different cognitive styles potentially exist amongst the political ideological spectrum.
Citation
Gray, Z. (2026). Think Fast, Vote Wrong: The Effects of Acute Stress on Voting Behaviors. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/6216
