Stress affects the prediction of others’ behavior

Abstract

Predicting behavior of other people is vital for successful social interactions. We tested whether a stress-induced cortisol increase affects healthy young men’s prediction of another individual’s behavior. Forty-two participants were randomly assigned to a stress or to a control condition. Afterwards, they participated in a modified false-belief task that not only tests false-belief understanding but also the tendency to predict another person’s future behavior based on his former behavior. Subjective ratings and salivary cortisol concentrations revealed a successful stress induction. Stress did not affect participants’ attribution of false beliefs but it increased the probability to predict that a protagonist would act according to his former behavior. Recognizing that stress fosters the interpretation of others’ behavior following their former behavior and not their current goals extends previous research showing that stress fosters our own habitual behavior.