The Influence of Some Psychological Factors on Latency of the Galvanic Skin Reflex

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of differences in motivativation and in attention on latency of the endosomatic GSR. Using verbal instructions, two different levels of motivation were induced in a group of 37 S s who performed a simple reaction task in which they pressed a button whenever a 250 cycle tone was presented. The same tone also served as a stimulus for eliciting the GSR. In a second experiment, 42 different S s performed a similar reaction task, but in this case the stimulus was the 250 cycle tone or a 1,000 cycle tone of equal subjective intensity. S s were asked to give a voluntary response to all tones irrespective of frequency and then, later on, to respond only when the 1,000 cycle tone was presented. Although voluntary reaction times were significantly shorter under conditions of high as compared with low motivation, latency of the GSR did not differ for the two conditions. In the second experiment, significantly shorter GSR latencies were recorded under the condition where S s were required to pay closer attention to the stimulus.