Draft:Easterbrook cue-utilisation hypothesis

Easterbrook Cue-utilization Hypothesis
In "The effect of emotion on cue utilization and the organization of behavior", the hypothesis tested suggests that under high-stress conditions, individuals tend to focus on a narrower set of cues and may overlook relevant information, leading to a decrease in decision-making effectiveness.

Easterbrook's paper attempts to expand and explore generalizations concerning "emotion and the organization of behavior", in order to verify that consistent emotional arousal reduces the range of cues that an organism uses, and that this reduction in range of cue utilization influences actions in ways that are either organizing or disorganizing, depending on the behavior concerned.

In each of the experiments alluded to in the paper, Easterbrook found that shrinkage or reduction in the range of cue utilization was associated with an increase in drive. In his words (Easterbrook, Page 1, §4): "it is an empirically derived generalization that, when the direction of behavior is constant, increase in drive is associated with a reduction in the range of cue use.".