Monetary incentive moderates the effect of implicit fear on effort-related cardiovascular response

• Participants were exposed to fear vs. anger primes in a difficult short-term memory task.
• Monetary incentive moderated affect primes effect on cardiac reactivity.
• In the fear prime condition, PEP and SBP responses were the strongest when incentive was high and the weakest when incentive was low. Reactivity in the anger-prime conditions fell in between.
• Results add to the evidence for the implicit-affect-primes-effort model (IAPE) and its integration with the principles of motivational intensity theory.

Integrating the implicit-affect-primes-effort model (Gendolla, 2012, 2015) with the principles of motivational intensity theory (Brehm & Self, 1989) we investigated if the effort mobilization deficit observed in people exposed to fear primes (vs. anger primes) in a difficult short-term memory task could be compensated by high monetary incentive. Effort was operationalized as cardiac response. We expected that fear primes should lead to the strongest cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) reactivity when incentive was high (high subjective demand and high justified effort) and to the weakest response when incentive was low (high subjective demand but only low justified effort). PEP reactivity in the anger-prime conditions should fall in between (high but feasible demand). We obtained the predicted pattern on responses of PEP and systolic blood pressure. The present findings show for the first time that the effort mobilization deficit of participants exposed to fear primes in a difficult cognitive task could be compensated by a high incentive.