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The volatile nature of positive affect effects: opposite effects of positive affect and time on task on proactive control

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Abstract

There is growing evidence suggesting that positive affect promotes cognitive flexibility at the cost of increased distractibility and decreased proactive control. Regarding the latter effect, some studies revealed inconsistent or even diverging findings casting doubt on the reliability of this observation. Recently, it has been shown that motivation can counteract positive affect effects. Here, the authors provide evidence for another factor that opposes positive affect effects, namely time on and experience with a task. To this end, the well proven AX-continuous performance task (AX-CPT) was used. Three groups of participants received three blocks of the AX-CPT with a positive affect manipulation (positive group) or neutral affect manipulation (neutral group) or alternating affect blocks (mixed group: pos-neut-pos). Results confirmed the positive affect effect associated with decreased proactive control in the positive and mixed group as compared to the neutral group. Most importantly, all groups showed an increase in proactive control with increasing time on task supporting our prediction that time on task is another factor opposing the positive affect effect. The results thus reveal the sensitivity of the positive affect effect to strategic influences developed with increasing experience with the given task. Implications for future research on the interplay of mild positive affect and cognitive control will be discussed.

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Notes

  1. Note that arousal ratings of established affective picture stimuli like the IAPS and subjective arousal ratings from participants before and after the experiment do not necessarily coincide. Moreover, not all studies provide both ratings which makes it even harder to disentangle the respective effects.

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Funding

This study was funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (DR 392/7-1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Regensburg, Universitaetsstr. 31, 93053, Regensburg, Germany

    Carmen Hefer & Gesine Dreisbach

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  1. Carmen Hefer
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  2. Gesine Dreisbach
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Correspondence to Carmen Hefer.

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Conflict of interest

Carmen Hefer declares no conflict of interest. Gesine Dreisbach declares no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Appendix: Numbers of affective picture stimuli (Lang et al., 1999)

Appendix: Numbers of affective picture stimuli (Lang et al., 1999)

Neutral: 7000, 7004, 7006, 7009, 7035, 7040, 7080, 7090, 7175, 7233

Positive: 1440, 1710, 1750, 1920, 2057, 2150, 2260, 2311, 2340, 2530

  1. The mean ratings for the neutral picture set were valence = 4.99 and arousal = 2.45, and for the positive picture set valence = 7.99 and arousal = 4.55

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Hefer, C., Dreisbach, G. The volatile nature of positive affect effects: opposite effects of positive affect and time on task on proactive control. Psychological Research 84, 774–783 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1086-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1086-4

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