Can personal task choice shield against fear and anger prime effects on effort? A study on cardiac response

• Published in: Biological psychology Vol. 181; p. 108616
• Main Authors: Framorando, David, Falk, Johanna R., Gollwitzer, Peter M., Oettingen, Gabriele, Gendolla, Guido H.E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01.07.2023
• Subjects: Action shielding; Anger - physiology; Attention; Cardiac response; Effort; Fear - physiology; Heart - physiology; Humans; Implicit affect; Pre-ejection period; Task Performance and Analysis; Volition; Volition; Pre-ejection period; Cardiac response; Action shielding; Implicit affect; Effort
• ISSN: 0301-0511; 1873-6246
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108616

This experiment tested whether personal task choice can shield against implicit affective influences on sympathetically mediated cardiovascular response, reflecting effort. Participants were N = 121 healthy university students who completed a moderately difficult memory task with integrated briefly flashed and masked fear vs. anger primes. Half of the participants believed they could choose between an attention and a memory task, while the other half was automatically assigned to the task. Replicating previous research, we expected an influence of the affect primes on effort when the task was externally assigned. By contrast, when participants were given a task choice, we predicted strong action shielding and thus a weak implicit affect effect on resource mobilization. As expected, participants in the assigned task condition showed stronger cardiac pre-ejection period reactivity when exposed to fear primes than when processing anger primes. Importantly, this affect prime effect disappeared when participants could ostensibly choose the task. These findings add to other recent evidence for action shielding by personal task choice and importantly extend this effect to implicit affective influences on cardiac reactivity during task performance. •Participants could choose or were assigned to a moderately difficult task.•Briefly flashed and masked fear vs. anger primes were presented during the task.•In the assigned task, cardiac PEP reactivity was stronger in the fear compared to the anger primes condition.•The prime effect disappeared when participants could choose their task.