Before a risky choice, the body speaks — a tightening, a quickening, a quiet electrical warning across the skin. A new randomized study of 109 young adults finds that when stress floods the body with cortisol, this ancient inner guidance system does not simply go quiet; in men, it reverses, steering them toward danger rather than away from it. The wisdom of the gut, it turns out, is only as reliable as the hormonal climate in which it operates.