Informational mood impact on effort-related cardiovascular response: the diagnostic value of mood counts

Drawing on the mood-behavior model (G. H. E. Gendolla, 2000), 2 experiments examined moods' informational impact on effort-related cardiovascular response. After being induced into positive versus negative moods, participants performed a memory task (Experiment 1) or a letter-cancellation task (Experiment 2). Half the participants received a cue that their mood could have been manipulated. As expected, both studies found stronger reactivity of systolic blood pressure in a negative mood than in a positive mood when no cue was provided. This effect diminished in the cue conditions. Additionally, achievement corresponded to systolic blood pressure reactivity (Experiment 1), the cue manipulation had no effect on mood, and mood had a congruency effect on subjective task difficulty in the no-cue conditions (Experiment 2).     

The informational impact of mood on effort mobilization: a study of cardiovascular and electrodermal responses

The impact of mood on effort quantified as autonomic adjustments was investigated in an experiment. The authors induced positive versus negative moods with either 1 of 2 mood induction procedures (music vs. autobiographical recollection) that differed in the extent of required effort. Then participants performed an achievement task after demand appraisals were made. Results were as predicted. During the mood inductions, autonomic reactivity (systolic blood pressure [SBP], diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, skin conductance responses) was stronger in the relatively effortful recollection conditions than in the relatively effortless music conditions. Mood valence had no impact here. But in the context of task performance, the authors found (a) mood congruency effects on the demand appraisals that reflected subjectively higher demand in a negative than in a positive mood, and (b) stronger SBP reactivity in a negative mood compared with a positive mood. Furthermore, SBP reactivity during task performance was correlated with achievement.     

Implicit achievement motive limits the impact of task difficulty on effort-related cardiovascular response

In contrast to the motive literature, motivational intensity theory predicts that the implicit achievement motive (nAch) should only exert an indirect impact on effort by limiting the impact of task difficulty. To contrast these two views, sixty-eight participants with a low or high nAch performed an easy or difficult arithmetic task. Effort was assessed using cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP). Supporting motivational intensity theory’s view, PEP response was low in both easy-task conditions but stronger in the high-nAch group than in the low-nAch group in the difficult task. These findings suggest that nAch exerts an indirect effect on effort investment by setting the maximally justified effort instead of directly determining the amount of effort that is invested to satisfy the motive.     

Mood state,task demand,and effort-related cardiovascular response

Drawing on the mood-behaviour model (Gendolla, 2000), two studies investigated informational effects of mood on effort-related cardiovascular response. Experiment 1 manipulated mood state (positive, negative) and task difficulty (easy, difficult, extremely difficult). Effects on cardiovascular reactivity were as expected: On the easy level, reactivity was weak in a positive mood, but strong in a negative mood; on the difficult level, reactivity was strong in a positive mood, but weak in a negative mood; on the extremely difficulty level mood had no effect. Experiment 2 manipulated mood only. As predicted, subjective demand and cardiovascular response were both higher in a negative mood than in a positive mood and the mood effect on cardiovascular response diminished after statistically controlling for the demand appraisals. Neither study revealed any mood effects on cardiovascular response during the mood inductions.     

Mental fatigue influence on effort-related cardiovascular response: difficulty effects and extension across cognitive performance domains

Two experiments investigated cardiovascular effects of mental fatigue as a function of (1) the difficulty of the cognitive challenge with which participants were confronted, and (2) the relevance of that challenge to the activity that instigated the fatigue. In the first, participants performed an easy (fatigue low) or difficult (fatigue high) counting task and then were presented an arithmetic challenge (task B relevance high) or a scanning challenge (task B relevance low) with instructions that they would avoid a noise if they attained a modest performance standard. Analysis of blood pressure responses assessed during the work periods revealed fatigue main effects, reflecting stronger responses for High Fatigue participants, regardless of the character of the second task. In the second, the procedure was the same except that it included a high performance standard and provided the chance to win a prize. Analysis of the pressure data revealed fatigue x work period interactions, reflecting relatively stronger responses among High Fatigue participants in work period 1, but relatively weaker responses among these participants in work period 2. Results confirm previous findings and support an analysis of fatigue influence on effort and associated cardiovascular responses. They also argue against the idea that mental fatigue influence may be confined to relevant cognitive performance realms.

The effect of worry on cardiovascular response to phobic imagery

Cardiovascular response to phobic exposures has been shown to reflect the degree of emotional processing of phobic material and relates in important ways to outcome in exposure therapy. The present study investigated the effect of worry on such processing. Speech anxious subjects visualized a phobic scene for 10 trials. Three groups differed according to whether they engaged in relaxed, neutral, or worrisome thinking just prior to each scene presentation. Although the three types of thinking had no effect on cardiovascular activity during the thinking periods, subjects in the worry group displayed significantly less heart rate response to the phobic image than those in the neutral condition who had significantly less response than the relaxed condition. However, the worry group showed significantly greater subjective fear to the images than the neutral condition, with the relaxed group near to the level of the worry group and not significantly different from either of the other two conditions. The results suggest that worry may inhibit emotional processing and thus preserve cognitive/affective fear structure, and are discussed in terms of Gray's (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 5, 469-534, 1982) theory of the behavioral inhibition system and semantic satiation effects in cognitive psychology.     

The impact of daycare environments on children's mood and behavior

This study examined the influence of different environmental features at nine daycare centers on 74 children's (42 boys and 32 girls) emotions in relation to their individual traits. The environments were predominantly assessed by semantic scales, and the children's emotions using a structured observational technique. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the activation level as well as the control of the behavior were related to the individual traits of the children, whereas the directedness and the hedonic tone of the behavior were related to the environment and the situation (meal or free play). Of special interest is the result that extrovert children displayed higher levels of control than the more introvert children. The most important quality of the physical daycare environment was unity, whereas intensity and familiarity were to most salient qualities of the social environment     

The "relative self": informational and judgmental consequences of comparative self-evaluation

Results of 5 studies demonstrated that self-evaluative comparisons have 2 distinct informational consequences with opposing judgmental effects: They selectively increase the accessibility of standard-consistent self-knowledge and provide an evaluative reference point. The first informational consequence produces assimilation in self-evaluative judgments, whereas the latter yields contrast. Using a lexical decision task, Study 1 demonstrated that a social comparison selectively increases the accessibility of standard-consistent self-knowledge. Study 2 showed that this effect also holds for comparisons with objective standards. Studies 3 and 4 revealed that the same comparison may lead to assimilation on objective and contrast on subjective self-judgments. Finally, Study 5 demonstrated that assimilation results for comparisons with relevant and irrelevant standards, whereas contrast occurs only for relevant standards.     

The effect of mental progression on mood

Mood affects the way people think. But can the way people think affect their mood? In the present investigation, we examined this promising link by testing whether mood is influenced by the presence or absence of associative progression by manipulating the scope of participants' information processing and measuring their subsequent mood. In agreement with our hypothesis, processing that involved associative progression was associated with relatively better moods than processing that was restricted to a single topic (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 ruled out the possibility that conceptual plurality alone accounted for these mood differences; results converge with the view that mood is affected by the degree to which thoughts advance conceptually.     

The joint influence of mood and a cognitively demanding task on risk-taking

This study investigates a mood regulation-based reconciliation of prior findings in the mood maintenance and information processes literatures about the impact of negative mood state on risktaking judgment. Participants were administered a negative mood state induction using a standardized film clip procedure and subsequently completed a measure of risk-taking judgment under one of three conditions: (1) immediately following the mood induction, (2) following a 5 min no-task delay period, or (3) following performance of a cognitively demanding task. As expected, participants who made risk judgments after the performance of the cognitively demanding task showed higher level of recovery from the negative mood induction (i.e., increased positive mood and decreased negative mood) and lower levels of risk-taking judgment than participants in the delayed condition. Additional analyses showed the risk-taking judgments were explained by mood change after the interpolated task. These findings reconcile previous inconsistencies between the two perspectives. Implications for future research on the restorative role of cognitive task performance as a mood regulation strategy are discussed.     

The effect of informational stimuli on instrumental response rate: Signalling reward versus signalling the availability of reward

Rats were trained to press a lever for food on an interval schedule and were given a brief cue (0.5 sec) between the operative response and the reward (C condition). Some control subjects in Experiments 1, 2 and 4 were given their cue either following the end of the temporal interval during which reward had been unavailable (SD condition), or randomly with respect to food (R condition). Other control subjects in Experiments 2 and 4 received both the food-correlated cue and the temporal-interval stimulus (B condition). In all experiments, rate of responding was lowest for the C subjects and for B animals when the two cues were from different modalities. Food-correlated and temporal-interval cues did not interact, suggesting that a reward-correlated signal does not affect response rate simply by enhancing the salience of the temporal interval offset.     

The effects of gender and response style on depressed mood

Research has shown that gender differences in the rate of depression may be accounted for by different response styles. To examine whether response style affects mood, depressed mood was induced in 31 females and 33 males (all Caucasian) who were then randomly assigned to either a ruminating or a distracting response task. The findings supported the response style theory as the ruminating group remained depressed after the response task, while the distracting group became less depressed. Gender was not a factor in this experiment as both men and women reacted similarly to the mood induction and the experimental tasks. Although clinical implication cannot be determined from a study involving nondepressed subjects, it can be concluded that ruminating about one's depressed mood is not an effective method for overcoming depression.     

The perceived informational value and affective consequences of choice behavior and intermediate difficulty task selection

Four experiments were conducted that examine the affective and informational determinants of risk-preference behavior. In the initial two experiments, subjects classified according to their level of achievement needs expressed a preference among tasks varying in difficulty. In two of the experimental conditions, instructions, respectively, conveyed that performance at the task chosen should either maximize satisfaction or the information gained about one's ability and effort expenditure. It was found that the majority of all subjects preferred to undertake tasks of intermediate difficulty and that both positive affect and information gain were perceived to be optimal at or near the level of intermediate difficulty. Experiments III and IV investigated at what level of task difficulty individuals most desire information about their performance. Police trainees and high school students with disparate self-concepts of respective target shooting and high-jumping ability were able to receive limited but self-selected performance feedback at a series of achievement tasks that varied in difficulty. The data revealed that the tasks selected for feedback became objectively less difficult as the self-perception of ability decreased. In addition, the tasks chosen for feedback were near the intermediate subjective certainty of success level for all subjects. It was contended that the data contradict Atkinson's model of choice but support an attributional conception. The general issue of affective versus informational models of motivation was discussed.     

The effect of mood on detection of covariation

The purpose of this research is to explore the effect of mood on the detection of covariation. Predictions were based on an assumption that sad moods facilitate a data-driven information elaboration style and careful data scrutinizing, whereas happy moods predispose individuals toward top-down information processing and decrease the attention given to cognitive tasks. The primary dependent variable involved is the detection of covariation between facial features and personal information and the use of this information for evaluating new target faces. The findings support the view that sad mood facilitates both conscious and unconscious detection of covariation because it increases motivation to engage in the task. Limiting available cognitive resources does not eliminate the effect of mood on the detecting of covariation.     

Conscientiousness and effort-related cardiac activity in response to piece-rate cash incentives

Although conscientiousness predicts many aspects of motivation, from delay of gratification to higher achievement, its relationship to responses to monetary incentives is surprisingly inconsistent. Several studies have found null or negative relationships between conscientiousness and behavioral performance in piece-rate, pay-for-performance tasks, in which people earn money for each unit of work completed. In the present study, we examined the role of conscientiousness in effort-related cardiac activity and behavioral performance during a pay-for-performance task. People worked on a self-paced, piece-rate cognitive task in which they earned 1 cent or 5 cents, manipulated within-person, for each correct response. Conscientiousness predicted greater physiological effort (i.e., shorter pre-ejection period [PEP] reactivity) as incentives increased but had no effect on behavioral performance. The findings suggest that conscientiousness is significantly related to effort for piece-rate tasks, and they reinforce a core idea in motivational intensity theory: effort, performance, and persistence are distinct outcomes that often diverge, so drawing conclusions about effort from performance can be complex.     

The effect of music-induced mood on attentional networks

Attention network theory suggests that there are three separate neural networks that execute the discrete functions of alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Previous research on the influence of mood on attention has shown subtle and inconsistent results. The attention network theory may aid in clarifying the influence of mood on attention. The present study investigated the influence of mood on attentional networks in a normal population. Participants performed the Attention Network Test (ANT), which provides functional measures of alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Positive or negative mood was induced by listening to music with a positive or negative valence, respectively; neutral mood was induced by reading a collection of basic facts about China. The results revealed that negative mood led to a significantly higher alerting efficiency relative to other moods, while there were no significant mood effects on orienting or executive attention efficiency. According to the algorithm underlying the ANT, the higher alerting efficiency in the negative mood condition can be attributed to relatively greater benefits of cueing effects. The findings are discussed in the context of the noradrenergic system and of evolutionary significance. Specifically, the increase in the alerting function during negative mood states may be due to the modulation effect of negative mood on the noradrenergic system, and/or to the survival benefit resulting from an increase in automatic vigilance towards negative information. The current results suggest that as the influence of negative mood on attention appears to specifically consist in an enhanced alerting function, it may not be found in studies where the three attentional networks are not dissociated.     

The impact of positive mood and category importance on crossed categorization effects

Four studies examined the effect of positive versus neutral affect on preference among potential discussion partners who were members of two in-groups, two out-groups, or both an in-group and an out-group (crossed targets). The importance of targets' category memberships was manipulated by idiographically based selection. Positive affect elevated evaluation of crossed targets with a dominant (differentially important) in-group (Study 1). When categories were made equally important, positive affect had no impact (Studies 2 and 3). Study 4 presented crossed targets with both equally and differentially important group memberships and showed that differential category importance (dominance) is necessary for positive affect to influence judgments about them. These results are explained by the broadened categorization induced by positive affect.     

The impact of violations on uncertainty and the consequences for attractiveness

This investigation aimed at extending past research on expectation violations by arguing that violations vary both in valance and in their influence on uncertainty and that the combination of valence and uncertainty states conjointly influences judgments of a violator's social attractiveness. In explaining the predicted variance in uncertainty following violations, a distinction is proposed between congruent violations (i.e., behaviors that are more intense instantiations of a previously displayed message) and incongruent violations (i.e., behaviors that are opposite in meaning from previously displayed messages). Five models for explaining violation effects are contrasted. Results (a) confirm that violations differ in their impact on uncertainty, (b) generally support the validity of the proposed distinction between congruent and incongruent violations, and show that the inclusion of uncertainty and valence in models of violation outcomes accounts for greater variance in social attraction than either one separately.     

Negative mood, self-focused attention, and the experience of physical symptoms: the joint impact hypothesis

A joint impact hypothesis on symptom experience is introduced that specifies the role of negative mood and self-focus, which have been considered independently in previous research. Accordingly, negative affect only promotes symptom experience when people simultaneously focus their attention on the self. One correlational study and 4 experiments supported this prediction: Only negative mood combined with self-focus facilitated the experience (see the self-reports in Studies 1, 2a, & 2b) and the accessibility (lexical decisions, Stroop task in Studies 3 & 4) of physical symptoms, whereas neither positive mood nor negative mood without self-focus did. Furthermore, the joint impact of negative mood and self-focused attention on momentary symptom experience remained significant after controlling for the influence of dispositional symptom reporting and neuroticism.     

Contrasting the effects of suboptimally versus optimally presented affect primes on effort-related cardiac response

Participants worked on an easy versus difficult arithmetic task with integrated happiness versus sadness primes, presented either suboptimally (briefly and masked) or optimally (long and visible). As predicted by the IAPE model (Gendolla in International Journal of Psychophysiology 86:123–135, 2012. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.05.003), the affect primes moderated the task difficulty effect on mental effort in the suboptimal-prime condition: cardiac pre-ejection period response was stronger in the happiness/difficult than in the sadness/difficult condition and tended to be stronger in the sadness-easy than in the happiness-easy condition. These effects were reversed in the optimal-prime-presentation condition, suggesting behavior correction due to controlled prime processing. Moreover, neither suboptimally nor optimally presented affect primes had prime-congruent effects on conscious mood assessed via self-report. The results demonstrate differential effects of implicitly versus explicitly processed affect cues on mental effort and suggest that they can do so without inducing emotional feelings.