Stress & Self-Control Costs

Study Summary

Self-control failures are a universal challenge for healthy and clinical populations. Recent work suggests these failures may arise from excessive cognitive costs associated with exercising self-control, yet the mechanisms underlying these costs are unknown. To address this, the investigators will use a validated decision-making task that measures how much individuals will pay (from a study endowment) to restrict access to tempting rewards that may lead to self-control failures. The investigators will examine these costs to identify their cognitive, neural and affective mechanisms. First, the investigators will identify the cognitive and computational mechanism that gives rise to self-control costs. Second, the investigators will characterize the neural correlates of self-control costs and identify neural mediators and connectivity patterns stemming from these costs. Finally, the investigators will examine how different classes of stressors (physical, social, or lifetime stress) shape the behavioral and neural representations of self-control costs.

Primary Outcome

The self-control cost is the amount that a participant would be willing to pay to avoid temptation. This will be tested in a self-control task in which participants are shown an images of snack food and report how much they would be willing to avoid the different food items.

Conditions Studied

Interventions

• BEHAVIORAL Trier Social Stress Test (TSST)
• DEVICE Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
• BEHAVIORAL Cold-Pressor Task (CPT)
• BEHAVIORAL Modified Non-Stress CPT
• BEHAVIORAL Modified Non-Stress TSST

Study Locations (1)