Do sadness-primes make me work harder because they make me sad?

Abstract

This experiment sought to clarify the potential role of emotional feelings in the systematic impact of implicitly processed affective stimuli on mental effort mobilisation. Participants worked on an attention task during which they were primed with suboptimally presented happiness versus sadness expressions. Before the task, half the participants received a cue for the possible affective influence of "flickers" to be presented during the task. This manipulation usually reduces the impact of conscious feelings on resource mobilisation. As anticipated, sadness primes resulted in higher experienced task demand and higher mental effort (stronger cardiac contractility assessed as shortened pre-ejection period) than happiness primes. Most importantly, instead of reducing the prime effects on mental effort, the cue manipulation significantly increased participants' effort in general, reflecting additional cognitive demand. The results speak against the idea that affect primes influence effort mobilisation by eliciting conscious emotional feelings.

Implicit activation of the aging stereotype influences effort-related cardiovascular response: The role of incentive

“…Several studies have supported this systematic impact of implicitly processed affect primes on effort-related cardiovascular response in cognitive tasks (e.g., Chatelain and Gendolla, 2015;Gendolla and Silvestrini, 2011;Lasauskaite et al, 2013). The present research applied a similar logic to explain how the aging stereotype can influence effort mobilization.…”

“…Also in our previous studies on affect priming, we have only sometimes found prime effects on subjective demand ratings (e.g., Gendolla and Silvestrini, 2011;Lasauskaite et al 2013, Lasauskaite Schüpbach et al, 2014Silvestrini and Gendolla, 2011b), or subjective effort (e.g., Chatelain and Gendolla, 2015). Other studies revealed the expected effort effects without significant effects on these self-report measures (e.g., .…”

Implicit Affect Primes Effort: Basic Processes, Moderators, and Boundary Conditions

“…The discrepancy between both results is not surprising. There was no evidence that our affect priming procedure induced conscious emotional feelings and thus nothing that could be corrected in the Lasauskaite et al () study. But apparently, the affect primes influenced experienced task demand in the Lasauskaite Schüpbach () experiment, i.e., an experience that could be corrected.…”

“…Moreover, it is of note that informing participants about the possible manipulation of their emotional feelings (rather than subjective demand) had not attenuated the prime effects in the earlier‐discussed study by Lasauskaite et al (). The discrepancy between both results is not surprising.…”

“…Although this is consistent with the IAPE model idea that affect primes influence effort implicitly, zero effects are hardly convincing. Thus, Lasauskaite, Gendolla, and Silvestrini () tried to run a more conclusive experiment. This study was stimulated by evidence that conscious feelings – if they are experienced – lose their effect on evaluative judgments when individuals are warned that their feelings could be manipulated.…”