f. Funnel Debriefing

In the funnel debriefing interview, 58% of the participants reported to have seen faces when they described a trial of the short-term memory task. However, only 21% of these participants dissociated the faces’ gender and only one (1.61%) participant reported on request to have seen an emotional expression. This suggests that the emotional content of the affect primes was processed without awareness. None of the participants made a link between the emotional stimuli, incentive, and the goal of the study.

110 II.4.5. Discussion

This experiment tested if high incentive can compensate the effort-mobilization deficit of individuals processing sadness primes during a difficult task. Demonstrating this effect would support the idea that affect primes’ effect on effort-related cardiac response is task context dependent rather than stable. The effects on PEP response, our primary dependent variable referring to effort (see Kelsey, 2012; Wright, 1996), supported our effort-related hypotheses. In the sadness-prime condition, PEP response increased with incentive and was, among all experimental conditions, the lowest in the sadness-prime/low-incentive condition and the strongest in the sadness-prime/high-incentive cell. The anger-prime condition fell, as anticipated, in between these cells. Here, incentive should not boost effort, because anger primes should activate the ease concept and thereby reduce subjective demand during performance. High incentive should only increase mobilized effort if subjective demand is high and the necessary effort needs to be justified, according to the well-supported principles of motivational intensity theory (Brehm & Self, 1989; see Wright & Kirby, 2001; Gendolla et al., 2012 for reviews). This was the case in the sadness- prime condition, because implicit sadness should activate the difficulty concept, leading to very high subjective demand. The significant a priori contrast modeled according to our theory-based predictions clearly supported this pattern.

Although not explicitly anticipated, the HR response pattern largely corresponded to that of PEP, resembling findings by Freydefont et al. (2012). The only difference between HR and PEP responses was that HR in the sadness-prime/low-incentive cell was not lower than in the two anger-prime cells. However, high incentive resulted in significantly increased HR in the sadness-prime condition. Also other studies have found that HR sometimes reflects effort-mobilization (Bongard & Hodapp, 1997; Eubanks et al., 2002; Gendolla & Richter, 2005; Obrist, 1981). But given that HR is determined by both sympathetic and parasympathetic impact on the heart, it is difficult to predict a priori if HR responds to variations in task demand and incentive. It should only do so if the sympathetic impact is stronger, but cognitive tasks usually only evoke relatively small changes in HR, which are likely to rely on parasympathetic withdrawal rather than sympathetic activation (cf. Berntson, Cacioppo, & Quigley, 1993). However, in the present experiment participants worked on a difficult task that resulted in relatively large

111 HR (and PEP) responses in the sadness-prime/high-incentive condition. This maybe explains why HR response resembled that of PEP.

In contrast to previous studies, no significant effects were found on SBP.

However, the previously found SBP effects (see Gendolla et al., 2012; Gendolla &

Brinkmann, 2005, Wright & Kirby, 2001 for reviews) were explained as being caused by cardiac contractility effects, which systematically influence systolic pressure by their impact on cardiac output. But besides contractility, systolic pressure also relies on peripheral resistance in the vasculature and can be masked by it. Consequently, PEP is the more reliable, because purer, index of ß-adrenergic impact on the heart (Kelsey, 2012;

Wright, 1996). In order to interpret PEP responses as reflecting ß-adrenergic sympathetic impact instead of effects of cardiac pre-load or afterload on ventricular filling, it is highly recommended to assure that shortened PEP is accompanied by general increases in HR and blood pressure (Sherwood et al., 1990). This was the case in the present study. As visible in Table 1, SBP and DBP generally increased during task performance, as did HR.

Thus, we interpret the present PEP responses as being caused by ß-adrenergic impact and thus reflecting effort (Kelsey, 2012; Wright, 1996).

Although PEP responded as anticipated, we have not found any significant effects on performance in terms of response times or errors. The high error rates in the short-term memory task only indicated that the task was, as intended, highly difficult. Some of our previous studies on affect priming and effort-related cardiovascular response had found performance effects (Gendolla & Silvestrini, 2011; Lasauskaite, Gendolla, & Silvestrini, 2012), while others have not (e.g., Silvestrini & Gendolla, 2011c). However, it has to be considered that effort and performance are not interchangeable constructs. Effort refers to the mobilization of resources for instrumental behavior, while performance refers its outcome. Besides effort, performance depends (at least) on ability, and strategy use (Locke & Latham, 1990), which makes predictions about a direct link between effort and performance difficult. More relevant for our theorizing is that the funnel debriefing procedure did not find any evidence for the possibility that participants were aware of the masked emotional expressions that were presented during the task or that they suspected a link between the “flashes” and effort mobilization. This suggests that the affect priming procedure was implicit and that the primes were processed without awareness of their content (cf. Gawronski, Hofmann, & Wilbur, 2006). Furthermore, it is of note that the

112 primes had the predicted effect on PEP response without having any effects on consciously experienced mood. We are aware that zero-effects, like those on conscious mood and anger, have to be interpreted with great caution. However, as it stands, we note at least that we have not found any evidence that the primes have induced conscious affective states or full-blown emotions. This is further supported by the fact that we did not find significant effects on blood pressure—which are typical for anger (see Kreibig, 2010), especially for anger elicitation during task performance (e.g., Bongard, Pfeiffer, Al’Absi, Hodapp, & Linnenkemper, 1997).

As outlined in the IAPE model (Gendolla, 2012), and supported by our previous work (Gendolla & Silvestrini, 2011), we explain affect prime effects on effort-related cardiovascular response with the implicit activation of mental representations of affective states (see Niedenthal, 2008; Zemack-Rugar et al., 2007). Being activated in the context of task performance, this affect knowledge—happiness and anger are associated with ease while sadness is related to difficulty—influences the experience of task demand “online”

during performance, which in turn takes effect on effort intensity, as outlined in the principles of motivational intensity theory (see Brehm & Self, 1989; Wright & Kirby, 2001). However, in contrast to our previous studies (Gendolla & Silvestrini, 2011;

Lasauskaite et al., 2012; Silvestrini & Gendolla, 2011c), measuring subjective task demand after performance did not reveal a significant affect-prime-effect on experienced difficulty. There was only a non-significant trend to slightly higher difficulty ratings in subjective incentive value reflected a successful manipulation. But interestingly, a more focused analysis revealed that subjective incentive value in the sadness-prime/high-incentive condition was higher than in the other cells and that sadness-prime/high-incentive value was significantly correlated with the PEP and HR responses. This reflects an association between effort and goal valence, as predicted by motivational intensity theory (Brehm &

Self, 1989; Wright & Brehm, 1989) and recently re-discovered in social psychology

113 (Higgins, 2006). Thus, this rating at least in part reflected “hot” affective goal value rather than only “cold” importance of success. Nevertheless, the incentive manipulation had the intended effect on justifying the mobilization of high resources in the sadness-prime condition. Consequently, this experiment contributes to the understanding of incentive effects on the intensity of motivation (e.g., Bijleveld, Custer, & Aarts, 2005b;

Locke & Braver, 2008; Pochon et al. 2002; Richter, 2012; Waugh & Gotlib, 2008). In a more narrow sense it provides additional evidence for the impact of high performance-contingent incentive on the justification of high resources, which are, however, only mobilized if subjective task demand is high (e.g., Gendolla & Krüsken, 2002; Silvestrini

& Gendolla, 2009b, 2011a; Wright, Williams, & Dill, 1992). To further test the idea about the task-context dependency of affect prime effects on effort-related physiological adjustments, future studies could enlarge the range of objective task difficulty levels, which were limited to two in the present studies. As depicted in Figure 1, integrating the predictions of the IAPE model (Gendolla, 2012) with the principles of motivational intensity theory (Brehm & Self, 1989) provides also predictions for extremely high difficulty levels.

General Discussion

117

III. General Discussion

This thesis investigated the moderating effect of implicit anger on effort-related cardiac response during cognitive tasks. In this general discussion, the main results of the studies presented in the experimental part will be summarized. Then, these results will be discussed and put into the context of the recent relevant literature. Finally, I will point out some limitations of the present work and make some suggestions for future research.