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Dysphoria and Mobilization of Mental Effort: Effects on Cardiovascular Reactivity

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Abstract

Two studies examined the influence of dysphoria on motivational intensity in a student sample. Participants worked on a memory task (Study 1) or a mental concentration task (Study 2) without fixed performance standard (“do your best”). Based on their scores on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies – Depression Scale (L. S. Radloff, 1977), dysphoric and nondysphoric students were compared with regard to their effort-related cardiovascular reactivity during task performance. As predicted on the basis of the mood-behavior-model (G. H. E. Gendolla, 2000) and motivational intensity theory (J. W. Brehm & E. A. Self, 1989), dysphoric participants showed stronger cardiovascular reactivity while working on the cognitive tasks than nondysphoric participants. In Study 1, nondysphoric participants performed better on the memory task than dysphoric participants. Theoretical implications are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Motivational intensity theory distinguishes between tasks with and without fixed performance standards, that is, with or without a certain performance level to attain. Tasks without fixed performance standards are labeled “unfixed” difficulty tasks; the difficulty level can be determined by the participants themselves who are simply asked to do their best (Brehm & Self, 1989).

  2. We also included the BDI-II (Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) in the initial questionnaire session. Participants’ scores on the BDI-II were highly correlated with their CES-D scores, r(35) = .96, p<.001. Group assignment did not change when considering the BDI-II instead of the CES-D for the selection process.

  3. Degrees of freedom are adjusted because of inequality of variances.

  4. The reason for this is that repeated measures ANOVAs revealed a decline of cardiovascular values over the first measures, while the last two measures remained stable (ps>.30). This decline is a common finding and due to habituation to the experimental setting and the fact being seated for a while.

  5. Given our directed a priori hypothesis we conducted one-tailed t-tests for comparisons between dysphoric and nondysphoric groups with regard to their cardiovascular reactivity.

  6. As in Study 1, scores of the BDI-II and the CES-D were highly correlated at both assessment times, rs>.83, ps<.001.

  7. The reason for this is that repeated measures ANOVAs revealed a decline of cardiovascular values over the first measures, while the last three measures remained stable (ps>.16).

  8. The last three measures of HR baselines were stable (p>.50) but the internal consistency was insufficient (α=.44). Therefore, we used only the last of the eight measures as HR baseline. In addition, because of problems with the measurement equipment there were some missing HR data, so that HR analyses are based on the data of 19 participants.

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Acknowledgements

This research was facilitated by a research grant form the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Ge 987/7-1) awarded to the second author. Portions of the present research were presented at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, Lisbon, Portugal, September 21--25, 2005. We are grateful to Michael Richter and some anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article and to Alexandra Russell and Annick Tinembart for their help as hired experimenters.

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  1. FPSE, Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, 40, Bd. du Pont d’Arve, CH-1211, Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Kerstin Brinkmann & Guido H. E. Gendolla

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  1. Kerstin Brinkmann
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Correspondence to Kerstin Brinkmann.

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Brinkmann, K., Gendolla, G.H.E. Dysphoria and Mobilization of Mental Effort: Effects on Cardiovascular Reactivity. Motiv Emot 31, 71–82 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-007-9054-0

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