Cognitive Processing and Situational Evaluation in College Students

Abstract Post-decision dissonance reflects the cognitive discomfort experienced when we must make a decision that goes against our internal ideations. While trait anxiety is fundamentally linked to chronic rumination and post-choice evaluation patterns (Knowles and Olatunji, 2021), acute situational anxiety can alternatively shift individuals towards hyper-analytical pre-decision processing and rigid internal justifications (Wake, Satpute, & Wormwood, 2021). The purpose of this ongoing study is to investigate whether baseline generalized anxiety moderates post-decision rating modifications when navigating hypothetical dilemmas of varying difficulty. Undergraduate participants completed an online, multi-phase survey on Qualtrics. Baseline generalized anxiety was measured using the GAD-7, and immediate decision regret was isolated using a targeted metric across two baseline vignettes: a low stakes scenario (purchasing coffee over car maintenance) and a high-stakes scenario (prioritizing an exam over a peer in crisis). Following a buffer task, participants re-evaluated their initial vignette responses to track behavioral rating volatility over time. Interim statistical analyses were conducted on data collected from an initial sample pool of undergraduate psychology students here at Murray State University (N = 33). Simple linear regression models revealed that baseline anxiety failed to significantly predict initial post-decision regret in both low-stakes (p = .408, R2 = .023) and high-stakes (p = .741, R2 = .004) conditions. Furthermore, a linear regression utilizing a within-subjects contrast delta indicated that baseline anxiety did not significantly moderate the rate of post-decision answer modification across difficulty levels (p = .423, R2 = .022). Interestingly, descriptive trends revealed a negative mean dissonance sensitivity delta (M = -0.55, SD = 2.81), demonstrating that participants exhibited lower answer modification rates (greater cognitive dissonance) in high stakes dilemmas than in low-stakes dilemmas. These interim findings suggest that within fully anonymous, hypothetical choice architectures lacking external social accountability, generalized anxiety may function primarily as a pre-decisional hyper-analytical filter rather than a post-decisional disruptive vector. Data collection is ongoing to reach a target of N = 60 participants, to further evaluate these cognitive processing mechanisms. Keywords: cognitive dissonance, generalized anxiety, decision-making, choice architecture, rumination