Impact of pain on mental effort assessed as cardiovascular reactivity

Pain and gain: Monetary incentive moderates pain's impact on effort‐related cardiac response

Ample evidence suggests that pain leads to additional demand in cognitive functioning, presumably due to its negative affective component and its propensity to capture attention. To highlight the role of motivational incentive, two experiments tested the combined effect of pain and monetary incentive on effort-related cardiovascular response during cognitive performance. In both studies, healthy volunteers received individually adjusted painful or nonpainful thermal stimulations during a difficult cognitive task (4-back task in Experiment 1; short-term memory task in Experiment 2) and expected high (12 Swiss Francs in both experiments) or low monetary incentive (1 Swiss Franc in Experiment 1; 0.10 Swiss Francs in Experiment 2) for successful performance. Effort was primarily assessed as changes in cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP). We predicted pain to increase subjective task difficulty during cognitive performance. Moreover, according to motivational intensity theory, we expected this to increase effort only when high effort was justified by high monetary incentive. Correspondingly, pain should lead to low effort (disengagement) when monetary incentive was low. Effort in the nonpainful conditions was expected to fall in between these conditions. The results of both studies support our predictions. Our findings provide the first evidence for the moderating effect of monetary incentive on physical pain's impact on effort-related cardiovascular response. Accordingly, motivational incentives can counteract effort deficits associated with pain.

Cognitive performance in pain is predicted by effort, not goal desire

Background

Pain’s disruptive effects on cognition are well documented. The seminal goal-pursuit account of pain suggests that cognitive disruption is less likely if participants are motivated to attended to a focal goal and not a pain goal.

Objectives

Existing theory is unclear about the conceptualisation and operationalisation of ‘focal goal’. This study aims to clarify how goals should be conceptualised and further seeks to test the theory of the goal-pursuit account.

Methods

In a pre-registered laboratory experiment, 56 participants completed an arithmetic task in high-reward/low-reward and pain/control conditions. Pain was induced via cold-water immersion.

Results

High levels of reported effort exertion predicted cognitive-task performance, whereas desire for rewards did not. Post-hoc analyses further suggest that additional effort in the pain condition compensated for pain’s disruptive effects, but when this extra effort was not exerted, performance deficits were observed in pain, compared to control, conditions.

Conclusion

Results suggest that ‘motivation’, or commitment to a focal goal, is best understood as effort exertion and not as a positive desire to achieve a goal. These results solidify existing theory and aid researchers in operationalising these constructs.