The Effects of psychosocial stress on Social and Non-social Decision-making: a systematic review and Meta-analysis

<b>Background: </b>People are involved in a multitude of social interactions in which possible positive or negative evaluations may affect their cognitive processes, including decision-making (DM). Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is an ecological experimental paradigm, vastly known in the literature for inducing psychological acute stress reactions including activation of the hypothalamus-hypophysis-adrenal axis. Some studies have used TSST to investigate the effects of psychosocial stress on DM. <b>Objective:</b> This study aims to perform a systematic literature review and meta-analysis to investigate the possible effects of TSST-induced acute psychosocial stress on social and non-social DM in healthy individuals. <b>Method: </b>To this end, a systematic review was performed on the PubMed, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and Embase databases. The terms surveyed were [Trier Social Stress Test ''] and ["Decision-making"]. The search identified a total of 38 studies, of which 27 were included in this review. <b>Results: </b>Our findings suggest that regarding social DM, acute stress tends to increase cooperation, evidenced by the increase in the number of altruistic and generous choices, which does not necessarily mean better performance in terms of rationality and utility. <b>Conclusions: </b>The effects of psychosocial stress in non-social DM processes depend on the sex, the time between the stressor and DM test, and individual factors, such as the basal anxiety level of the individual.