Frozen by stress: Stress increases scope insensitivity

Stress has become a widely experienced state all around the world, and previous literature has found that stress impacts individuals’ cognition, emotion, coping behaviors and psychological well-being in general. Relatively little is known about how stress influences individuals’ perception of stimuli changes, a ubiquitous phenomenon known as scope sensitivity. In the current work, we explore whether individuals with higher levels of chronic stress are sensitive to stimuli changes, such as price and quantity differences. Two empirical studies consistently show that chronically stressed individuals exhibit scope insensitivity, as they rated the expensiveness of two hotel rooms with different prices as being less different and indicated a smaller difference in their willingness-to-buy five CDs versus ten CDs. Possible explanations and theoretical and practical implications in the broader field are discussed.