Based on previous research on implicit effects on effort-related cardiovascular response and evidence that aging is associated with cognitive difficulties, we tested whether the mere activation of the aging stereotype can systematically influence young individuals' effort-mobilization during cognitive performance. Young participants performed an objectively difficult short-term memory task during which they processed elderly vs. youth primes and expected low vs. high incentive for success. When participants processed elderly primes during the task, we expected cardiovascular response to be weak in the low-incentive condition and strong in the high-incentive condition. Unaffected by incentive, effort in the youth-prime condition should fall in between the two elderlyprime cells. Effects on cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) and heart rate (HR) largely supported these predictions. The present findings show for the first time that the mere activation of the aging stereotype can systematically influence effort mobilization during cognitive performance-even in young adults.

Based on the Implicit-Affect-Primes-Effort model and evidence that aging is associated with cognitive difficulties, this experiment investigated the effect of masked age primes on young adults' effort-related cardiovascular response during a mental arithmetic task. We predicted that elderly primes should activate the aging stereotype and thus render the performance difficulty concept accessible, while youth primes should activate the performance ease concept-similarly, as affect primes do. The accessible difficulty or ease concepts, in turn, should influence experienced demand and thus effort-related cardiovascular response during cognitive performance. A neutral prime control condition should fall into these conditions. We found the expected effects on performance-related responses of heart rate (HR) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP): For both measures, the elderly primes led to the strongest reactivity, the youth primes led to the weakest reactivity, and the neutral-prime control condition fell in between these conditions.

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