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

• Published in: Psychophysiology Vol. 60; no. 2; pp. e14169 - n/a
• Main Authors: Bouzidi, Yann S., Gendolla, Guido H. E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.2023; John Wiley and Sons Inc
• Subjects: action shielding; Attention - physiology; Attention task; cardiovascular reactivity; Cognition - physiology; Cognitive ability; cognitive conflict; Conflict, Psychological; effort; Heart; Humans; Mental task performance; Original; pre‐ejection period; Reaction Time - physiology; Stroop Test; cardiovascular reactivity; action shielding; effort; cognitive conflict; pre-ejection period
• ISSN: 0048-5772; 1469-8986; 1540-5958
• DOI: 10.1111/psyp.14169

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. Cognitive conflict is said to be effortful, but conclusive evidence is lacking. One problem is that conflict in cognitive control tasks is confounded with response difficulty. We bypassed this problem by administrating pictures of congruent vs incongruent Stroop task stimuli as conflict primes. Primed conflict indeed increased responses of cardiac pre‐ejection period in tasks that were neither difficult nor conflict‐related themselves. Furthermore, participants’ personal choice of task characteristics could eliminate the conflict effect on effort.