Personal task choice shielded against the implicit effect of fear primes on effort, eliminating the increased cardiac pre-ejection period reactivity observed when the task was externally assigned.
RCT (n=121)
Double-blind
Randomly assigned to a 2x2 between-persons design
No
Personal task choice shields against implicit affective influences on sympathetically mediated cardiovascular reactivity (effort) during task performance.
Effect estimate: η² 0.04
p-value: p=0.025
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.
Framorando et al. (Sat,) conducted a rct in Healthy university students (n=121). Personal task choice with fear or anger primes vs. Externally assigned task with fear or anger primes was evaluated on Cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) reactivity during the first minute of the task (3:1 contrast) (η² 0.04, p=0.025). Personal task choice shielded against the implicit effect of fear primes on effort, eliminating the increased cardiac pre-ejection period reactivity observed when the task was externally assigned.