Comment: Do Emotions Influence Action? – Of Course, They Are Hypo-Phenomena of Motivation

Applying philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific analyses of emotions’ role in automatic and deliberative action, the present five target articles shed new light on the old question of whether and how emotions influence action. However, what is missing among the present approaches is a straightforward motivational analysis considering what we have learned from the science of explaining the “why” and “how” of behavior. I posit that emotions can influence the motivation process and thus action by fulfilling at least three functions: First, being grounded in needs, experienced emotions can function as strong need-like motivational states. Second, anticipated emotions can function as incentives and thus justify action. Third, emotions can inform about progress in goal pursuit in self-regulated action. In summary, there is little doubt that emotions influence action. They can do so because they are hypo-phenomena of motivation

Implicit Affect Primes Effort: Basic Processes, Moderators, and Boundary Conditions

This article informs about the implicit-affect-primes-effort (IAPE) model—a theory on the impact of implicit affect on resource mobilization—and research testing this account. Beside basic influences of implicitly processed affective stimuli on behavior, this article highlights moderators and boundary conditions of this process. The IAPE model posits that affect primes implicitly activate mental representations of affective states containing information about performance ease and difficulty. This influences subjective task demand during performance, which determines effort. A series of experiments assessing implicit affect’s impact on effort-related cardiovascular response in cognitive tasks revealed replicated support for the IAPE model. Moreover, objective task difficulty and incentive moderated the effect of implicit affect on effort, and especially controlled processing of affect primes and activated concepts turned out to be boundary conditions

Commentary: Engage or disengage? Interpretations from a resource conservation perspective

Abstract In this commentary, I discuss the eight empirical contributions to the Motivation and Emotion special issue on goal disengagement from a resource conservation perspective. This process was not in the focus of the reported studies, but is central for understanding both engaging and disengaging. I will outline that many of the new findings on disengagement reported in this special issue are highly compatible with the predictions of and research on motivational intensity theory. Examples are the roles of commitment, subjective goal value, affective experiences, autonomy, self-awareness, and action planning. These variables have been found to be central for both engagement and disengagement and their consideration in a resource mobilization perspective should contribute to a more complete understanding of “letting go”. </p

Implicit affect primes effort: A theory and research on cardiovascular response

This article introduces a newtheory about implicit affect's influence on resourcemobilization—the implicit-affect primes effort (IAPE) model—and discusses a series of experiments testing its predictions. The theory posits that affect primes (e.g., facial expressions or emotion words) implicitly activate mental representations of the respective affective states, containing information about ease and difficulty. This in turn influences the extent of subjective task demand during performance. A series of experiments assessing implicit affect's impact on effort-related cardiovascular response in cognitive tasks (especially cardiac pre-ejection period) supports this idea: (1) sadness primes processed during task performance led to stronger cardiovascular responses than both happiness and anger primes. (2) Affect primes moderated the effect of objective task difficulty: compared with sadness primes, both anger and happiness primes led to weaker response for easy tasks but to stronger response for difficult tasks. (3) The effort deficit of people primedwith sadness during a difficult task could be compensated by high success incentive. Perspectives for future research on implicit affect andmotivation are discussed

Implicit Affect and the Intensity of Motivation: From Simple Effects to Moderators

This article reports findings from a program of research on the systematic influence of implicitly perceived facial expressions of emotions on effort mobilization in cognitive tasks. Recently published research on the implicit-affect-primes-effort (IAPE) model (Gendolla, 2012) has revealed replicated evidence for this effect: implicitly perceived facial expressions of sadness, anger, fear, and happiness influence effort-related cardiac response during cognitive performance. In further support of the IAPE model, those studies revealed that the effects of implicitly processed emotional expressions on effort mobilization differ systematically: Implicit fear and sadness expressions that are processed online during task performance render tasks subjectively more difficult, resulting in relatively high effort. Implicit happiness and anger expressions have the opposite effect. Moreover, objective task difficulty and incentive moderated the effect of implicit affect, and especially controlled processing of affect primes turned out to be a boundary condition

The impact of mood on affect regulation: Effects on film preferences

Drawing on the mood-behavior model (Gendolla, 2000), I predicted that both negative and positive moods evoke a stronger need for hedonic affect regulation than a so-called neutral mood. To test this hypothesis, participantswere induced into a positive, neutral, or negative mood by autobiographical recollection and then selected which of three films they wanted to watch. The films varied in the extent of their potential for hedonic affect regulation. As expected, preferences for a pleasant film were higher in both positive and negative moods than in a neutral mood and the positive and negative mood conditions did not differ. Furthermore, a regression analysis found that the preference for a pleasant film was related to mood intensity. Implications for other models of affect regulation are discussed