In an attempt to integrate theorizing on action shielding with affective influences on effort‐related cardiovascular response, an experiment with N = 115 university students (90% women) tested whether working on a task by personal choice versus external assignment moderates the effect of happy versus sad background music on effort‐related cardiovascular response during task performance. We predicted strong action shielding and low receptivity for incidental affective influences when participants could ostensibly choose the task to be performed. Given the difficult nature of the task, we thus expected strong effort‐related cardiovascular responses due to high commitment when the task was chosen. By contrast, for assigned‐task participants, we expected high receptivity for incidental affective influences and thus predicted strong cardiovascular reactivity when they were exposed to happy music but low responses due to disengagement when they were exposed to sad music. Effects on responses of cardiac pre‐ejection period, systolic blood pressure, and heart rate confirmed our effort‐related predictions. Apparently, personal choice of a task can immunize individuals against incidental affective influences on resource mobilization.

No abstract

This experiment investigated how the personal choice of task characteristics influences resource mobilization assessed as effort-related cardiac response during a task of clearly low versus unclear (but also low) difficulty. We expected that the personal color choice of memory task stimuli would justify higher effort during task performance than external color assignment. Applying the logic of motivational intensity theory (MIT; Brehm et al., 1983; Brehm & Self, 1989), we further predicted that the personal choice of the stimuli’s color would directly lead to higher effort intensity than external color assignment when task difficulty was unclear but not when the task difficulty was clear. When task difficulty was low and clear, we expected actual effort to be low in general, because high resources are not necessary for a clearly easy task. Results were as expected: When task difficulty was unclear, participants who had personally chosen the stimuli’s color showed significantly stronger cardiac preejection period reactivity, reflecting higher effort, than those in the other three conditions. These findings provide first evidence that personal choice justifies relatively high effort and further support the principles of MIT regarding the critical role of task difficulty for resource mobilization.

No abstract

No abstract