Two experiments tested whether engaging in actions by personal choice vs. external task assignment moderates the effect of incidental affective stimulation on action control (volition). As choice of an action alternative has been found to lead to strong goal commitment, an implemental mindset, and determined task focus, we reasoned that it should shield action control from incidental affective influences. By contrast, external task assignment should lead to weaker action shielding and thus give way to incidental affective influences. Results followed our predictions. When participants were assigned the cognitive task, they persisted less (Study 1) and mobilized lower effort assessed as cardiac pre-ejection period (Study 2) when they were exposed to happy music as compared with sad music.These music effects on volition did not appear among participants who could choose the task. Our results show that working on a task is shielded better from incidental affective influences when the task is chosen rather than assigned.

Two experiments with N = 221 university students investigated the impact of primed cognitive conflict on effort assessed as cardiac response in tasks that were not conflict‐related themselves. Manifest cognitive conflict in cognitive control tasks is confounded with objective response difficulty (e.g., in incongruent Stroop task trials). This makes conclusions about the effortfulness of cognitive conflict itself difficult. We bypassed this problem by administrating pictures of congruent versus incongruent Stroop task stimuli as conflict primes. As predicted, primed cognitive conflict increased cardiac pre‐ejection period (PEP) responses in an easy attention task in Experiment 1. Accordingly, cognitive conflict itself is indeed effortful. This effect was replicated in an easy short‐term memory task in Experiment 2. Moreover, as further predicted, the primed cognitive conflict effect on PEP reactivity disappeared when participants could personally choose task characteristics. This latter effect corresponds to other recent evidence showing that personal action choice shields against incidental affective influences on action execution and especially on effort‐related cardiovascular response.

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.

This article presents four studies. Study 1 reports the development and psychometric properties of a French version of the Action Control Scale (ACS-Fr) (Kuhl, 1994a)-a frequently used instrument for assessing individual differences in action-state orientation in self-regulation. Studies 2-4 tested the predictive power of the ACS-Fr regarding individuals' ability to escape from rumination, initiate action, and maintain goal-directed behavior-three major components of efficient action control. In Study 1, confirmatory factor analysis revealed a revised three-factor model (with 24 items) fitting the scale's structure well. Regression analyses suggest convergent validity of the ACS-Fr in terms of associations with related self-regulation capacities and problems and a moderate overlap with the Big Five global personality traits. Further speaking for the ACS-Fr validity and its predictive power, we found preliminary evidence that actionoriented individuals ruminated less (Study 2), engaged in action more easily (Study 3), and persisted longer in a cognitive control task (Study 4) than state-oriented people.

Grounded in classic will psychology (Ach, 1935;Lewin, 1926), Kuhl's (1994a) action control theory posits that individuals differ in their abilities to form and maintain intentions and to execute goal-directed actions. This study tested if this has effects on effort-related responses in the cardiovascular system. Action-orientation refers to the capacity to enact an intention and to stay focused on and committed to one's goals. By contrast, stateorientation indicates individuals who ruminate and have difficulties with initiating and maintaining goal-directed behavior. In other words, state-oriented individuals tend to inhibit the enactment of their intentions. As a consequence, action control theory holds that action-oriented individuals have higher self-regulation capacitiesespecially, volitional enactment, action shielding, and affect-regulation skills-in face of demanding challenges (Beckmann, 1994;Kazén & Kuhl, 2022;Koole, 2004;Koole et al., 2012;Kuhl & Koole, 2004). As shown by Koole et al. (2012), this has effects on self-regulation: Action-oriented individuals demonstrated more efficient self-regulation under demanding conditions. By contrast, self-regulation was impeded in face of difficulties in stateoriented individuals.To date, most of the studies on the effects of actionstate orientation and task demand have only used behavioral measures (e.g.,