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Do sadness-primes make me work harder because they make me sad?
Ruta Lasauskaite1, Guido H E Gendolla, Nicolas Silvestrini
1Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Cognition & Emotion
|June 22, 2012
Summary
Implicitly processed emotional stimuli, like sadness or happiness cues, impact mental effort. Surprisingly, warning participants about these cues amplified their cognitive demand and mental effort, not reduced it.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Affective Science
Background:
- Affective stimuli can influence cognitive processes.
- The role of conscious emotional feelings in mediating this influence is debated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if conscious emotional feelings mediate the impact of implicitly processed affective stimuli on mental effort.
- To examine how awareness of affective stimuli influences mental effort mobilization.
Main Methods:
- Participants completed an attention task.
- Suboptimal visual primes of happiness and sadness expressions were used.
- A cue manipulation informed half the participants about potential affective influences.
Main Results:
- Sadness primes led to higher perceived task demand and mental effort (measured by cardiac contractility) compared to happiness primes.
- The cue manipulation, intended to reduce affective influence, unexpectedly increased overall mental effort and cognitive demand.
- The findings suggest conscious feelings do not mediate the effect of affect primes on effort mobilization.
Conclusions:
- Affective primes influence mental effort mobilization independently of conscious emotional feelings.
- Awareness of affective stimuli can increase cognitive load and mental effort.
- The study challenges theories positing conscious emotional experience as the primary mediator of affect-prime effects on effort.
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