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With the rapid social changes and quickened pace of life, stress may pose a severe test on collective decision-making. The present study examines how acute stress affects women's group decision-making in the context of face-to-face interaction. We adopted a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning technique to measure coherent neural activities in dyads engaging in an Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) under acute stress. Behavioral results showed that stressed dyads got a higher net score than dyads in control groups during late decision-making rounds, indicating more rational group decision-making performance under acute stress. The fNIRS results further manifested that greater inter-brain synchronization (IBS) was detected in stressed dyads. During the late decision-making phase, increased IBS at the frontopolar cortex (FPC) and left temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) were observed across the dyads under acute stress. The IBS at TPJ of stressed dyads covaried with self-reported cooperativeness and more rational decision-making performance of the stressed dyads. Our findings aligned with the "tend and befriend" response mode hypothesis, indicating that female dyads exhibited better decision-making performance under acute stress, and this rationality might be attributed to the enhanced cooperativeness and intensifying cooperativeness and increased brain-to-brain coupling at TPJ in stressed dyads.

With the ever-changing social environment, stress has exerted the substantial influence on the social interaction. The present study examined the underlying cognitive and neural mechanism on how acute stress affected the real-time cooperative and competitive interaction with four hypothesized path models. We used the hyperscanning technique based on a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) device to examine brain-to-brain coherence within the dyads engaging Pattern Game (PG) under acute stress manipulated through Trier Social Stress Test for Groups (TSST-G). Behavioral results showed stressed dyads exhibited better cooperative performance and higher self-other overlap level during the cooperative session than dyads in control group. The fNIRS results identified higher interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) in right temporal-parietal junction (r-TPJ) stronger Granger causality from partner to builder during the cooperative session in stress group when comparing with control group. Our results corroborated better performance in the cooperative context and further identified that brain-to-brain coherence in r-TPJ and self-other overlap serially mediated the effect of acute stress on cooperative performance.

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