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

Abstract

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.

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

“…Our present experiments show that the way people engage in an action-by personal choice versus external assignment-is decisive: Personal choice shields against irrelevant noise effects on effort. The present findings indicate shielding effects that go beyond previously studied affective stimulations where happy and sad moods have been experimentally induced by background music (Falk et al, 2022a(Falk et al, , 2022bGendolla et al, 2021) or where participants were exposed to emotion primes (Framorando et al, 2023a(Framorando et al, , 2023b or aversive conflict primes (Bouzidi & Gendolla, 2023a; see also Bouzidi & Gendolla, 2023b). The choice seems to immunize individuals against a variety of potentially conflicting influences, including distractive and unpleasant irrelevant noise.…”

“…Based on an action-shielding model (Gendolla et al, 2021), a recent series of studies on the effects of personal choice demonstrated that choice-based action shielding against unintended external affective influences applies to two important aspects of volition-effort intensity and task persistence (Bouzidi & Gendolla, 2023a, Study 2;Falk et al, 2022aFalk et al, , 2022bFramorando et al, 2023aFramorando et al, , 2023bGendolla et al, 2021). These findings suggest that personal choice indeed leads to an action-shielding process that protects action execution from distracting and potentially conflicting influences from the environment.…”

Personal task choice attenuates implicit happiness effects on effort: A study on cardiovascular response

“…A corresponding effect was found for primed cognitive conflict, which is aversive, vs. primed non-conflict (Bouzidi & Gendolla, 2023a. In a highly difficult task context, Framorando et al (2023b) successfully replicated the effect by contrasting sadness vs. anger primes instead of fear versus anger primes. The study revealed that anger primes lead to a stronger sympathetically mediated cardiac response than sadness primes when the task was externally assigned .…”

“…There is also first evidence for a shielding effect against affect primes' influences on effort in fixed difficulty contexts (Framorando et al, 2023a(Framorando et al, , 2023b. In those studies, participants worked on a moderately difficult or highly difficult task that was either personally chosen or externally assigned.…”

“…Participants were asked to detect and count 19 vowels amongst multiple series of letters, which was initially estimated to correspond to an objectively fixed and difficult task. As in previous studies (Falk et al, 2022a;Framorando et al, 2023aFramorando et al, , 2023bGendolla et al, 2021) half of the participants could ostensibly choose between two tasks (attention or memory), while the other half were assigned to the task type chosen by a yoked participant in the Chosen Task condition. All participants completed the same letter counting task, which comprised both attention and memory components.…”