Deep breathing may not make people more cautious, but rather increase high-risk behaviors.
Slow, deep breathing can help calm you down when you're feeling anxious, reduce stress, and help you relax. Many people believe that deep breathing calms their thoughts and allows them to make more careful decisions, but new research suggests that deep breathing may actually increase high-risk behaviors.
Slow breathing impacts inter-organ dynamics modulating brain function and risk behavior: Neuron
Deep, Calming Breaths May Actually Increase Risk-Taking Behavior : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/deep-breathing-to-calm-your-nerves-may-actually-increase-risk-taking-behavior
Deep breathing, which involves taking a short inhale and exhaling slowly, is used by the military and law enforcement agencies as a way to maintain composure and focus in high-pressure situations. Deep breathing is known to increase the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the opposite of the sympathetic nervous system activated by the fight-or-flight response , and helps to shift the body into a state of rest and digestion .
In a 2026 study, a research team at Charité Berlin Medical University in Germany investigated whether calming the mind through deep breathing could actually change choices. In their paper, the team stated, 'By intentionally altering the state of our autonomic nervous system, we can shape how we perceive the world and ultimately influence our choices. However, it remains unclear how, or even if, intentional autonomic regulation affects human decision-making.'
The research team had 41 subjects lie down inside an MRI scanner and perform a gambling task. In the gambling task, subjects had to decide whether to accept or reject a bet with a 50% chance of winning, while either breathing normally or taking a deep breath by inhaling for 2 seconds and exhaling for 8 seconds as instructed on the screen. Simultaneously, the research team also measured heart rate, respiratory rate, skin conductance (electrical activity of the skin), and pupil diameter.
Analysis of the data confirmed that deep breathing did indeed increase indicators of parasympathetic nerve activity in the heart. On the other hand, no changes were observed in indicators related to the fight-or-flight response, such as skin conductance and pupil diameter. This suggests that the effect of deep breathing is specific to a sedative effect on the nervous system, rather than a general suppression of arousal.
Furthermore, when researchers focused on the decisions participants made in a gambling task, they found that taking deep breaths increased the tendency to make higher-risk choices. After adjusting for the risks and rewards, they examined the participants' decision-making process in the gambling task and found that participants who took deep breaths became more sensitive to the presented 'potential rewards,' while their sensitivity to 'potential losses' remained unchanged. In other words, participants who took deep breaths didn't simply become reckless, but rather paid more attention to 'what they would gain from this choice.'
Brain scans of subjects performing a gambling task revealed that those who showed a significant increase in parasympathetic activity after deep breathing exhibited increased activity related to reward in two brain regions. These activated regions were
The research team sees these findings as evidence that the body's internal state plays a role in shaping decision-making and influences visceral neurotransmitters connecting respiration, heart, and brain. In their paper, the team stated, 'This pattern highlights the essential function of the body's state.'
It should be noted that this study focused on decisions made in a safe laboratory environment, not under pressure in the real world. Furthermore, the average age of the participants was young, at 25 years old, and the reward and loss amounts were intentionally designed to be unbalanced to facilitate the detection of effects.
Future research may be able to more generalize the effect of deep breathing on decision-making by adjusting the amounts of reward and loss more evenly and increasing the diversity of participants. ScienceAlert, a science media outlet, advised, 'The next time you have to make a big financial decision, don't assume that taking a few slow, deep breaths will make you a wiser decision.'
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