Increasing and decreasing motor and cognitive output: A model of general action and inaction goals.

Abstract

General action and inaction goals can influence the amount of motor or cognitive output irrespective of the type of behavior in question, with the same stimuli producing trivial and important motor and cognitive manifestations normally viewed as parts of different systems. A series of experiments examined the effects of instilling general action and inaction goals using word primes, such as “action” and “rest.” The first 5 experiments showed that the same stimuli influenced motor output, such as doodling on a piece of paper and eating, as well as cognitive output, such as recall and problem solving. The last 2 experiments supported the prediction that these diverse effects can result from the instigation of general action and inaction goals. Specifically, these last 2 studies confirmed that participants were motivated to achieve active or inactive states and that attaining them decreased the effects of the primes on behavior.

Motivating exercise: The interactive effect of general action goals and past behavior on physical activity

“…These items included "How strongly do you feel happy", "sad", "excited", and "nervous". Responses to these questions did not differ across prime or computer task conditions, Fs < 1, ns, which is consistent with prior work that has consistently found null effects on mood items based on manipulations of general action (e.g., Albarracin et al, 2008).…”

“…Interestingly, recent empirical work has demonstrated that behavior can be guided by broad goals to engage in active or inactive behaviors, regardless of what behavior is ultimately pursued (Albarracin et al, 2008. Furthermore, these goals can be moderated by exposure to environmental stimuli that denote the concepts of action and inaction.…”

“…Therefore, for the present experiment, we hypothesized that exposure to environmental cues denoting action would lead to increased engagement in exercise. Furthermore, we sought to test an important boundary condition for the effectiveness of these environmental cuesspecifically, because the pursuit of action appears to be regulated as a goal Albarracin et al, 2008;Gendolla & Silvestrini, 2010;Laran, 2010), the prior completion of action-relevant behaviors should have a suppression effect on subsequent exercise behavior. That is, if individuals have recently completed an active task, they should be (a) less motivated for further action such as exercise and (b) insensitive to environmental primes for action that could otherwise be used to motivate exercise.…”

“…For example, exposing participants to action (vs. inaction or control) concepts led to increased motivation to solve math problems (Albarracin et al, 2008), increased consumption of food (Albarracin, Wang, & Leeper, 2009), faster reporting of attitudes , and stronger reported intentions to vote in elections and volunteer for political causes (Noguchi, Handley, & Albarracin, 2011). The effects of exposure to action/inaction concepts on behavior have consistently been demonstrated to be goal-mediated, and thus the pursuit of active or inactive behaviors appears to involve an important motivational component Albarracin et al, 2008;Gendolla & Silvestrini, 2010;Hepler, Albarracin, McCulloch, & Noguchi, in press;Laran, 2010). Essentially, when people are exposed to general action concepts, they activate a goal to do something, regardless of what they end up doing, and this goal can be satisfied by any number of otherwise unrelated behaviors.…”

How emotion context modulates unconscious goal activation during motor force exertion

“…Thus behaviour is not only guided by reward pursuit that requires conscious information processing. For instance, implicit priming of the concepts 'action' and 'inaction' (e.g., using words primes such as active, go or rest, stop) can facilitate or impede, respectively, motor and cognitive processes in a variety of behaviours such as eating, drawing and even political participation (Albarracín et al, 2008;Albarracín et al, 2009;Noguchi et al, 2010). Here, action and inaction constructs were defined as "motivational end states that regulate the pursuit of high-effort, active behaviour versus low-effort, inactive behaviour" .…”