Cognitive Load, Emotional Interference, and Decision-Making in Helping Professionals: A Psychophysiological Investigation

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of cognitive load on emotional Stroop interference and professional decision-making in Irish helping professionals, and examined physiological and individual difference factors underlying this relationship. 41 active helping professionals completed a within-subjects counterbalanced experiment comprising an occupation-specific emotional Stroop task under high and low cognitive load conditions, operationalised via response deadline, alongside profession-specific decision vignettes and continuous electrodermal activity recording. High cognitive load produced significant, large-effect reductions in Stroop accuracy and reaction time consistent with a speed-accuracy tradeoff across all participants. Vignette decision quality showed a non-significant medium effect in the predicted direction. Electrodermal reactivity did not differ significantly between conditions, nor did it mediate the interference–decision quality relationship or respond to moderation by state stress or professional experience. Post-hoc analyses revealed that experienced practitioners showed greater cognitive interference than less experienced counterparts, males and females expressed the speed-accuracy tradeoff differently, and medication use — reported by 51.2% of the sample — represents a plausible source of electrodermal signal attenuation. The findings provide the first experimental evidence of cognitive load effects in an Irish helping professional sample and challenge the assumption that professional experience confers cognitive protection under emotional demand. Keywords: cognitive load, emotional Stroop, helping professionals, electrodermal activity, decision-making