Individual differences in action‐state orientation moderate task difficulty effects on effort‐related cardiac response

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Since personal choice fosters commitment and shields action execution against potentially conflicting influences, two laboratory experiments with university students (N = 228) tested whether engaging in action by personal choice versus external assignment of task characteristics moderates the effect of irrelevant acoustic noise on cardiovascular responses reflecting effort. Participants who could personally choose the stimulus color of moderately difficult cognitive tasks were expected to be shielded against the irrelevant noise. By contrast, when the stimulus color was externally assigned, we predicted receptivity for the irrelevant noise to be high. As expected, in both experiments, participants in the assigned color condition showed stronger cardiac pre‐ejection period reactivity during task performance when exposed to noise than when working in silence. On the contrary, participants who could choose the stimulus color were shielded against the noise effect on effort. These findings conceptually replicate and extend research on the action shielding effect by personal choice and hold practical implications for occupational health.

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Noise annoys—But personal choice can attenuate noise effects on cardiac response reflecting effort

Falk,

Gollwitzer,

Oettingen

et al. 2023

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“…Moreover, the here reported effects of dispositional volitional capacities on PEP reactivity are in line with recent findings showing that action‐oriented individuals are able to maintain high effort during objectively difficult tasks, whereas state‐oriented persons disengage (Bouzidi & Gendolla, 2023b). Taken together, these results emphasize the importance of assessing theoretically relevant individual differences when studying resource mobilization.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Some readers might have noted that the internal consistency of the ACS-Fr Preoccupation was not very high (though not low) in the present study. However, this corresponds to this scale's internal consistency in other already published studies , 2023b. As outlined in that work, low loadings on some items could be at the origin of this psychometric imperfection.…”

Section: Implications For Action Controlsupporting

confidence: 72%

Action‐orientation shields against primed cognitive conflict effects on effort‐related cardiac response

Bouzidi

Gendolla

2023

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This article presents a quasi‐experiment (N = 79 university students) testing whether individual differences in action‐state orientation moderate primed cognitive conflict's effects on sympathetically mediated cardiac response during task performance reflecting effort. Action control theory posits that action‐oriented individuals are less receptive to distracting affective stimuli during goal pursuit than state‐oriented individuals because action‐orientation is related to higher volitional skills. Therefore, we expected that action‐oriented individuals should be shielded against conflict primes' effect on effort‐related responses in the cardiovascular system. By contrast, state‐oriented individuals should be more sensitive to irrelevant negative affective stimulation and therefore mobilize higher resources under such conditions. Responses of the cardiac pre‐ejection period (PEP) during a moderately difficult short‐term memory task corroborated these predictions. The present findings provide the first evidence that individual differences in action‐state orientation indeed moderate previously demonstrated cognitive conflict priming effects on effort‐related cardiac response and extend recent findings on action shielding.

“…Additionally, an action choice-based shielding effect has been observed in priming cognitive conflict , Study 2) and was recently replicated for the shielding effect of individual differences in action orientation (Bouzidi & Gendolla, 2023). Importantly, our present results extend the shielding effect from mental protection against explicit affective influences to shielding against implicitly processed affective primes, which can have effects on effort in externally assigned cognitive tasks (Gendolla, 2012(Gendolla, , 2015.…”

Section: Theoretical Implicationssupporting

confidence: 80%

“…The present results align with previous findings on the impact of personal choice on explicit affective influences (Falk et al., 2022a, 2022b; Gendolla et al., 2021), obstrusive noise effects (Falk et al., 2023), and other priming effects on sympathetically mediated cardiovascular reactivity. Additionally, an action choice‐based shielding effect has been observed in priming cognitive conflict (Bouzidi & Gendolla, 2022, Study 2) and was recently replicated for the shielding effect of individual differences in action orientation (Bouzidi & Gendolla, 2023). Importantly, our present results extend the shielding effect from mental protection against explicit affective influences to shielding against implicitly processed affective primes, which can have effects on effort in externally assigned cognitive tasks (Gendolla, 2012, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

The power of personal control: Task choice attenuates the effect of implicit sadness on sympathetically mediated cardiac response

Framorando,

Falk,

Gollwitzer

et al. 2023

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Implicitly processed pictures of facial expressions of emotions have been found to systematically influence sympathetically mediated cardiovascular reactivity during task performance. According to the Implicit‐Affect‐Primes‐Effort model, this happens because different affect primes activate the concepts of performance ease versus performance difficulty. Grounded in a recent action shielding model, our laboratory experiment (N = 129 university students) tested whether engaging in action by personal choice can immunize against those implicit affective influences on effort. Participants worked on an objectively difficult cognitive task, which was either externally assigned or ostensibly personally chosen. As predicted, participants in the assigned task condition showed weaker cardiac pre‐ejection period reactivity during task performance, reflecting disengagement, when they were primed with sadness than when they were exposed to anger primes. Most relevant, this affect prime effect disappeared when participants could ostensibly choose their task themselves. These findings replicate previous research on implicit affect's impact on sympathetically mediated cardiac response and extend the literature on action shielding by personal choice effects to implicit affective influences on action execution.