The timing-dependent effects of stress-induced cortisol release on evaluative conditioning.

The neuro-physiological response to stress has far-reaching implications for learning and memory processes. Here, we examined whether and how the stress-induced release of cortisol, following the socially-evaluated cold pressor test, influenced the acquisition of preferences in an evaluative conditioning (EC) procedure. We found that when the stressor preceded the evaluation phase, cortisol responders showed decreased evaluative conditioning effects. By contrast, impairing effects of a stressor-induced cortisol release before encoding were not found. Moreover, explicit memory was not found to be affected by the stressor or its timing. Implications of the timing-dependent effects of stress-induced cortisol release on EC and the relation between stress and associative memory are discussed. • Cortisol has a strong impact on the retrieval of acquired preferences. • Stress-induced cortisol before evaluation decreased preference retrieval. • Acute stress induced before encoding had no impairing effect on preference learning. • Cortisol effects on preference learning are not reflected in episodic memory. • All data and analyses scripts are publicly available online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]