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

Abstract

This article informs about the implicit-affect-primes-effort (IAPE) model -a theory on the impact of implicit affect on resource mobilization -and research testing this account. Beside basic inf luences of implicitly processed affective stimuli on behavior, this article highlights moderators and boundary conditions of this process. The IAPE model posits that affect primes implicitly activate mental representations of affective states containing information about performance ease and difficulty. This inf luences subjective task demand during performance, which determines effort. A series of experiments assessing implicit affect's impact on effort-related cardiovascular response in cognitive tasks revealed replicated support for the IAPE model. Moreover, objective task difficulty and incentive moderated the effect of implicit affect on effort, and especially controlled processing of affect primes and activated concepts turned out to be boundary conditions.

It's about effort: Impact of implicit affect on cardiovascular response is context dependent

“…The present results support our predictions and provide evidence for the IAPE model (Gendolla, , ) idea that implicit affect primes' effect on cardiovascular responses is context dependent and applies only to settings that call for effort mobilization. In the achievement‐context condition, in which participants worked on a challenging memory task, briefly flashed happiness primes resulted in stronger cardiovascular reactivity (PEP, HR, SBP, DBP) than sadness primes, as indicated by significant a priori contrasts.…”

“…Moreover, also the lack of a significant affect prime effect on the post‐task measure of difficulty is not surprising, given that the IAPE model is concerned with implicit effects on task demand during performance, rather than after. In this context, it is of note that studies by Lasauskaite, Gendolla, Bolmont, and Freydefont () directly tested for implicit associations between happiness and ease versus sadness and difficulty in a sequential priming paradigm and found clear evidence for the affect‐demand associations posited in the IAPE model (Gendolla, , ). Moreover, the observed significant task‐context main effect on participants' success importance ratings speaks for the efficiency of the task‐context manipulation, since only participants in the achievement‐context condition worked on a cognitive challenge during the task, while those in the other condition were asked to be passive and merely watched the computer screen.…”

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

“…Specifically, we aimed at testing whether high monetary incentive could moderate the expected effort-mobilization deficit of young individuals who implicitly process elderly-primes during a difficult cognitive task. Demonstrating this effect would support the idea that age primes could influence effort-related cardiovascular response in the same way as affect primes do (see Gendolla, 2012Gendolla, , 2015 for overviews).…”

“…Extending the IAPE model logic (Gendolla, 2012(Gendolla, , 2015 to the effect of age primes on effort mobilization, we tested whether high monetary incentive could eliminate the expected effort-mobilization deficit of young individuals who process elderly-primes during an objectively difficult cognitive task-similarly as it was previously found for implicitly processed sadness-primes , fearprimes , or pain-primes (Silvestrini, 2015). As outlined above, effort was operationalized as performance-related cardiovascular response, especially cardiac PEP.…”

“…Our hypothesis is grounded in a recent research program on the impact of the implicit activation of emotion stereotypes on cognitive effort that was guided by the Implicit-Affect-Primes-Effort (IAPE) model (Gendolla, 2012(Gendolla, , 2015. Accordingly, people acquire knowledge about emotions that is stored in long-term memory-they develop emotion concepts (Niedenthal, 2008).…”