NCT07252947

Stress and Anxiety Effects on Valuation

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 200 (estimated)
• Sponsor: NYU Langone Health · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The purpose of this study is to understand how stress, anxiety, and negative affect change learning and decision-making processes. The primary objective is to assess two forms of decision-making-reward adaptation and emotion prediction errors-differ as a function of stress and anxiety. The secondary objectives are to assess how individual differences measured in our studies relate to these decision variables.

Conditions

• Reward Value Level

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor Task (SECPT)	The SECPT is a validated laboratory stressor that combines physiological stress with social evaluative components; it is widely used to elicit acute stress responses in controlled settings. Participants are asked to submerge their nondominant hand into an ice-cold water (0-4°C) for 3 minutes, while videotaped and observed by one neutral-faced experimenter.
BEHAVIORAL	Non-Stressful Control Task	Participants assigned to the warm water control condition will perform a non-evaluative task with warm water.

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-12-18
• Primary completion: 2028-11-07
• Completion: 2028-11-07
• First posted: 2025-11-28
• Last updated: 2025-12-22

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States