Incidental affective influences on effort-related cardiac response: The critical role of choosing task characteristics

Falk, Johanna R.; Gollwitzer, Peter M.; Oettingen, Gabriele; Gendolla, Guido H. E.

doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.04.010

Cited by 12 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…As expected, letting participants personally choose task characteristics eliminated the conflict prime effect on PEP reactivity. This shielding effect conceptually replicated the results of recent studies on an action-shielding model, in which personal choice immunized against the effect of affect-inducing music on PEP responses (Falk et al, 2022a(Falk et al, , 2022bGendolla et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…For this first test of conflict primes' effect on cardiovascular response we wanted to get valid data of at least 30 participants per condition. We did so, because previous research manipulating either explicit or implicit affect found significant effects of medium size on cardiac reactivity with samples between 20 and 31 participants per condition (e.g., Falk et al, 2022a , 2022b ; Framorando & Gendolla, 2018 ; Gendolla et al, 2021 ). To compensate for possible data loss because of technical problems with the vocal Stroop task or the physiological measures, we recruited N = 90 University of Geneva students with different majors (average age 24 years) with distributed flyers.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Experiment 2 aimed at replicating the conflict prime effect on PEP and further tested whether it could be moderated by the personal choice of task characteristics. We based our hypothesis on recent findings showing that giving individuals the possibility to choose among task characteristics fosters commitment (Bouzidi et al, 2022 ) and shields against incidental affective influences (Falk et al, 2022a , 2022b ; Gendolla et al, 2021 ). As outlined above, cognitive conflict is aversive and thus represents an affective stimulation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is cognitive conflict really effortful? Conflict priming and shielding effects on cardiac response

Bouzidi

Gendolla

2022

Psychophysiology

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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.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is cognitive conflict really effortful? Conflict priming and shielding effects on cardiac response

Bouzidi

Gendolla

2022

Psychophysiology

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“…Distance learning, its content, essence, and structure have been studied from various perspectives ( Riva et al., 2021 ; Glaser et al., 2022 ; Falk et al., 2022 ). Some researchers merge the notion of distance learning with the concept of online education ( Fuchs et al., 2019 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Color education: A study on methods of influence on memory

Diachenko

Kalishchuk²,

Zhylin³

et al. 2022

Heliyon

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“…Once individuals decide to pursue a certain goal-or choose between goal-relevant characteristics (e.g., Gollwitzer et al, 1990)-they commit themselves (consciously or unconsciously) to the goal, strive to achieve it, and benefit from an implemental mindset (Gollwitzer, 1993;Nenkov & Gollwitzer, 2012). People become task-focused (Kuhl, 1986) and shielded against external affective influences (e.g., Achtziger et al, 2008;Falk et al, 2022aFalk et al, , 2022bGendolla et al, 2021) and temptations (e.g., Shah et al, 2002) that could impede goal attainment. All that in service of being committed to their decision.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Choosing task characteristics oneself justifies effort: A study on cardiac response and the critical role of task difficulty.

Bouzidi¹,

Falk²,

Chanal³

et al. 2022

Motivation Science

Self Cite

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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.

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Incidental affective influences on effort-related cardiac response: The critical role of choosing task characteristics

Cited by 12 publications

References 40 publications

Is cognitive conflict really effortful? Conflict priming and shielding effects on cardiac response

Is cognitive conflict really effortful? Conflict priming and shielding effects on cardiac response

Color education: A study on methods of influence on memory

Choosing task characteristics oneself justifies effort: A study on cardiac response and the critical role of task difficulty.

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