Mood impact on cardiovascular reactivity when task difficultyis unclear

摘要

Research in the context of the mood-behavior-model (Gendolla in Rev Gen Psycho! 4:348-408, 2000) hasshown that moods can have an impact on effort mobiliza-tion due to congruency effects on demand appraisals.However, the mood research literature suggests that moodmay also influence effort mobilization by its impact onappraisals of the instrumentality of success. In a singlefactor (mood valence: negative vs. neutral vs. positive)between-persons design, participants performed a memorytask under conditions of unclear task difficulty. By suc-cessfully performing the task, participants could earn thechance to win a monetary reward. As predicted for taskswith unclear difficulty, effort mobilization—assessed ascardiovascular reactivity—increased from negative topositive mood. This effect was mediated by the subjectiveprobability of winning the monetary reward for successfulperformance. These results demonstrate for the first timethat mood can influence effort mobilization via the esti-mated instrumentality of success.