Abstract
Objectives
Based on the Implicit-Affect-Primes-Affect (IAPE) model (Gendolla 2012, 2015), we investigated the effect of affect primes’ visibility on effort-related cardiac response.
Methods
Participants worked on a cognitive “parity task” with integrated pictures of sad vs. angry faces that were briefly flashed (25 ms) vs. clearly visible (780 ms). We recorded cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) to assess effort mobilization.
Results
As expected, PEP reactivity in the sadness-prime condition was stronger than in the anger-prime condition when the primes were briefly flashed, while the opposite pattern occurred when the affect primes were clearly visible. However, these effects only occurred for men, but not for women, as indicated by a significant prime x prime visibility x gender interaction.
Conclusions
These findings provide new evidence for the role of prime visibility as a moderator of automatic effort mobilization—and suggest that this moderator effect applies especially to men.
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Notes
As in our previous research (e.g., Lasauskaite Schüpbach et al. 2014), we use the term suboptimal rather than subliminal, because the latter refers to stimulus presentations below individually determined thresholds of conscious perception.
The gender distribution reflects the higher interest of women to participate in the study coupled with constraints during the recruitment period.
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Acknowledgements
David Framorando and Guido H. E. Gendolla, Geneva Motivation Lab, FPSE, Section of Psychology, University of Geneva, Switzerland. This research was supported by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF 100014-162399) awarded to Guido Gendolla. We thank Deniz Kilicel for her help as hired experimenter.
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Framorando, D., Gendolla, G.H.E. The Effect of Negative Implicit Affect, Prime Visibility, and Gender on Effort-Related Cardiac Response. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 4, 354–363 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-018-0097-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-018-0097-0