Prime visibility moderates implicit anger and sadness effects on effort-related cardiac response

Based on the Implicit-Affect-Primes-Effort (IAPE) model (Gendolla, 2012, 2015), an experiment investigated the effect of affect primes' visibility on effort mobilization during cognitive processing. Participants worked on a short-term memory task with integrated sadness vs. anger primes that were presented suboptimally (briefly and masked) vs. optimally long and visible). Effort was assessed as cardiovascular response, especially cardiac preejection period (PEP). To monitor performance, we assessed response accuracy and reaction times. In accordance with the IAPE model, PEP reactivity was stronger in the sadness-prime condition than in the anger-prime condition-but only when the primes were suboptimally presented. Effects on response accuracy revealed a corresponding pattern. The results suggest that prime visibility is a boundary condition of anger and sadness primes' effect on effort mobilization.