If cortisol (stress) is supposed to help us be prepared for life or death situations, then why do a lot of people (incl. me) make such stupid mistakes when under it’s influence?

Question

I’m mostly talking about social interactions mostly – like when you forget the most important thesis during exam, getting pizza sizes wrong when ordering or when prompted a question “what are chips made from?” and you answer “fries”

In: 23

Answer 1

Because the kind of stress you experience is not the kind of stress that we evolved to deal with.

The kind of stress we were prepared for historically was “oh shit I’m about to die.” This gets our bodies ready to fight or run away. It isn’t really complex decision-making.

Modern stress is not something that we evolved to deal with.