Trying to make a big decision while you're also preparing for a scary presentation? _ . Feeling stressed changes how people weigh risk and reward. However, an article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests stressed people pay more attention to the positive sides of a possible outcome. It's a bit surprising that stress makes people focus on the way things could go right, says Mara Mather of the University of Southern California. She co-wrote the review paper with Nichole R.Lighthall. "This is sort of not what people would think, " Mather says. "Stress is usually associated with negative experiences, so you'd think, maybe I'm going to be more focused on the negative outcomes." But researchers have found that when people are under stress, they start paying more attention to positive information and discounting negative information. "Stress seems to help people learn from positive feedback and impairs their learning from negative feedback, " Mather says. When people under stress are making a difficult decision, they may pay more attention to the good sides of the alternatives they're considering and less to the problems. So someone who's deciding whether to take a new job and is feeling stressed by the decision might focus on the increase in salary more than the longer commute . The increased focus on the positives also helps explain why stress plays a role in addictions. People under stress have a harder time controlling their urges. "The compulsion to get that reward comes stronger and they're less able to resist it," Mather says. A person who's under stress might think only about the good feelings they'll get from a drug, while the downsides shrink into the distance. Stress also increases the differences in how men and women think about risk. When men are under stress, they become even more willing to take risks; when women are stressed, they get more conservative . Previous research backs this up -- men usually react to difficulties while trying to fight them or escape them; women try to find friends and improve their relationships. What is the central theme of the article?
Stress can affect decision-making. Stress increases our desire to get rewards. We should think more about the upside of problems. There is a link between stress and negative experiences.