Food Insecurity, Cognitive Control, and Risky Choice

David Dickinson and Jacob Norwood

No 26-08, Working Papers from Department of Economics, Appalachian State University

Abstract: Food insecurity affects roughly 18 million people in the United States and 2.3 billion globally. Given its prevalence, this study aims to examine how food insecurity and resulting anxiety affect cognitive control and decision-making. Samples of n=102 food-insecure and n=102 food-secure individuals were recruited from the Prolific online subject pool to complete an incentivized Stroop Task and a Monetary Risk Taking task. Randomized treatment assignments administered either a High or Low Cognitive Load manipulation prior to decision making by prompting participants to consider a more or less expensive unexpected financial expense. While food insecurity did not impact cognitive control and risky choices as hypothesized, it may indirectly affect outcomes via anxiety. And, exploratory analysis of response times data suggest food insecurity may promote some increased risk taking due to less deliberative decision processing. The role of anxiety and its effect on choice process among the food-insecure likely merits further investigation. fatigue. Key Words: food insecurity, cognitive load, anxiety, risky-choice

JEL-codes: D00 D91 I30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-neu
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