When conflict influences liking: The case of the Stroop task

Action-orientation shields against primed cognitive conflict effects on effort-related cardiac response

This article presents a quasi-experiment (N = 79 university students) testing whether individual differences in action-state orientation moderate primed cognitive conflict's effects on sympathetically mediated cardiac response during task performance reflecting effort. Action control theory posits that action-oriented individuals are less receptive to distracting affective stimuli during goal pursuit than state-oriented individuals because action-orientation is related to higher volitional skills. Therefore, we expected that action-oriented individuals should be shielded against conflict primes' effect on effort-related responses in the cardiovascular system. By contrast, state-oriented individuals should be more sensitive to irrelevant negative affective stimulation and therefore mobilize higher resources under such conditions. Responses of the cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) during a moderately difficult short-term memory task corroborated these predictions. The present findings provide the first evidence that individual differences in action-state orientation indeed moderate previously demonstrated cognitive conflict priming effects on effort-related cardiac response and extend recent findings on action shielding.

When a smile is still a conflict: Affective conflicts from emotional facial expressions of ingroup or outgroup members occur irrespective of the social interaction context

Facial expressions play a crucial role in human interactions. Typically, a positive (negative) expression evokes a congruent positive (negative) reaction within the observer. This congruent behavior is inverted, however, when the same positive (negative) expression is displayed by an outgroup member. Two approaches provide an explanation for this phenomenon. The social intentions account proposes underlying social messages within the facial display, whereas the processing conflict account assumes an affective conflict triggered by incongruent combinations of emotion and the affective connotation of group membership. In three experiments, we aimed at further substantiating the processing conflict account by separating the affective conflict from potential social intentions. For this, we created a new paradigm, in which the participant was an outside observer of a social interaction scene between two faces. Participants were required to respond to the emotional target person that could represent an ingroup or outgroup member. In all three experiments, irrespective of any social intention, responses were consistently affected by the group relation between participant and emotional target, i.e., the affective (in)congruency of the target seen by participants. These results further support the processing conflict account. The implications for the two theoretical accounts are discussed.

The Relationship between Formal Music Training and Conflict Control: An ERP Study

Music training involves manifolds of sensorimotor processes that tie closely with executive functions, including conflict control. Past studies have found consistent evidence in children of the link between music learning and executive functions. However, the same relationship has not been found in adult populations, and conflict control has yet to be studied in a focused manner. Via the Stroop task and event-related potentials (ERPs), the present study examined the association between musical training and conflict control ability among Chinese college students. The findings exhibited that individuals with music training outperformed individuals without music training by demonstrating higher accuracy and faster reaction times on the Stroop task and exhibiting greater N2 and smaller P3 amplitudes compared to the control group. The results support our hypothesis that people who received music training demonstrate advantages in their capacity for conflict control. The findings also provide scope for future research.

Is cognitive conflict really effortful? Conflict priming and shielding effects on cardiac response

Two experiments with N = 221 university students investigated the impact of primed cognitive conflict on effort assessed as cardiac response in tasks that were not conflict-related themselves. Manifest cognitive conflict in cognitive control tasks is confounded with objective response difficulty (e.g., in incongruent Stroop task trials). This makes conclusions about the effortfulness of cognitive conflict itself difficult. We bypassed this problem by administrating pictures of congruent versus incongruent Stroop task stimuli as conflict primes. As predicted, primed cognitive conflict increased cardiac pre-ejection period (PEP) responses in an easy attention task in Experiment 1. Accordingly, cognitive conflict itself is indeed effortful. This effect was replicated in an easy short-term memory task in Experiment 2. Moreover, as further predicted, the primed cognitive conflict effect on PEP reactivity disappeared when participants could personally choose task characteristics. This latter effect corresponds to other recent evidence showing that personal action choice shields against incidental affective influences on action execution and especially on effort-related cardiovascular response.

Stroop effect in smartphone addiction among college students

ABSTRACT

Smartphone addiction (SPA) affects an increasing number of college students, but it remains poorly understood. This study aimed to explore the psychological mechanism of the decrease in cognitive control ability from cognitive psychology in students with SPA.The smartphone addition tendency scale (MPATS) was used to identify 64 undergraduates with SPA (MPATS > 45) and 64 sex- and age-matched controls (MPATS < 30).The 2 groups were well matched for age and sex distribution. The RT of the SPA group under the conflict state was 628.2±59.2 ms vs 549.4 ± 44.2 ms under the consistent state (P < .005). The RT of the control group under the conflict state was 707.5 ± 66.4 vs 582.0 ± 39.4 ms under the consistent state (P < .005). Under the conflict state, errors made by the SPA group were 8.7 ± 5.4, and that of the control group was 6.6 ± 3.7 (P < .05). The reaction delay of the SPA group was 25.6 ± 49.2 vs 110.0 ± 41.8 ms (P < .05).Correlation analysis showed a clear positive correlation between SPA and the number of mistakes in the conflict state of the Stroop task.

The Stroop Task Influences Product Evaluations

Cognitive conflict is considered to represent a psychologically negative signal. Indeed, a recent publication showed that cognitive conflict emerging from the Stroop task influences evaluations for neutral shapes that had become associated with conflict and non-conflict, respectively. Building on these findings, the present research investigates the degree to which Stroop conflict influences evaluations of actual products. In an experimental study, participants performed a Stroop task in which they responded to conflict trials (e.g., the word red presented in a blue font) as well as non-conflict trials (e.g., the word red presented in a red font). Participants were also presented with two pictures featuring bottled water brands: One brand was consistently presented after non-conflict trials; the other brand was consistently presented after conflict trials. When participants evaluated the products, the results showed they rated the product associated with Stroop conflict less favorably than the product associated with non-conflict; however, this effect only emerged when participants were thirsty. When participants were not thirsty, no differences emerged. The present findings add to the literature on cognitive conflict and negativity, suggesting that Stroop conflict can influence product evaluations when those products are goal relevant.

Motor-response execution versus inhibition alters social-emotional evaluations of specific individuals

Social-emotional evaluations of unfamiliar people are negatively impacted by ignoring or withholding motor-responses from images that depict them; an effect attributed to the propensity of inhibition to affectively devalue associated stimuli. Prior findings suggest that the social-emotional consequences of inhibition may operate on category-level representations that impact all members of a corresponding group. Here we assess whether such social-emotional consequences of motor-response action versus inaction also operate on item-level representations of specific individuals. Participants memorized individual identities of a group of fellow students before completing a Go/No-go response-inhibition task designed to associate item-level representations of each previously-memorized person with action (Go trials) or inaction (No-go trials). Social identities associated with action were consistently rated as more trustworthy in subsequent evaluations than those associated with inaction. This suggests that the social-emotional consequences of motor-response execution versus inhibition can operate on item-level stimulus representations in memory.

Perceived conflict may be negative but resolved conflict is not

The current study investigated how exposure to a conflict stimulus influences the judgment of a subsequent stimulus's valence. We used an affective priming paradigm, presenting a color Stroop stimulus as a prime and a face as a target for an emotion recognition task. When the task for the prime was passive viewing (Experiment 1), congruent primes resulted in faster responses to emotionally positive targets than negative targets. However, this positivity bias disappeared following incongruent primes. In Experiment 2, instead of passive viewing, participants were asked to indicate the congruency of the prime, and the positivity bias was significant following the congruent prime but not following the incongruent prime. In Experiments 3 and 4, participants performed the conventional Stroop task on the prime, therefore resolving the conflict when the prime was incongruent. Experiment 3 adopted an equal proportion of congruent and incongruent primes. Experiment 4 adopted twice as many congruent primes as incongruent primes. In both experiments, the positivity bias was not significant regardless of the congruency of the prime. These results suggest that detecting conflict may interfere with positive affect or promote negative affect, therefore reducing the positivity bias. Once the conflict is resolved, however, the negative valence may disappear.

Cognitively demanding stimuli can acquire positive valence

Generally, people tend to avoid stimuli that require mental effort; effort can generate negative emotions. However, employing mental effort can also promote positive emotions, given a successful outcome. We investigated whether the level of cognitive effort associated with stimuli will elicit positive or negative emotions. In Experiment 1, participants performed a gender Stroop task during the association phase. The actors from the Stroop task expressed emotionlessness, while half of the actors were displayed in the mostly incongruent (MI) condition and the rest in the mostly congruent (MC) condition. In the transfer phase, we used the same actors for the emotion discrimination task, and the actors expressed a positive emotion half of the time and a negative emotion for the other half. For the MI actors, participants responded faster to positive emotion than to negative emotion, but this difference was not significant for the MC actors. In Experiment 2, the association phase involved a task switching paradigm in which half of the actors were presented in the mostly switching (MS) condition and the other in the mostly repetition (MR) condition. In the transfer phase, the same individuals' faces were used for emotion discrimination. For the MS actors, but not the MR actors, the responses were faster to positive emotion than to negative emotion. Our results imply that stimuli associated with more cognitive effort (i.e., MI and MS stimuli) may be perceived as more positive after a successful outcome of a task, although future research is required to replicate these findings.

Conflict monitoring and the affective-signaling hypothesis-An integrative review

Conflict-monitoring theory proposes that conflict between incompatible responses is registered by a dedicated monitoring system, and that this conflict signal triggers changes of attentional filters and adapts control processes according to the current task demands. Extending the conflict-monitoring theory, it has been suggested that conflict elicits a negative affective reaction, and that it is this affective signal that is monitored and then triggers control adaptation. This review article summarizes research on a potential signaling function of affect for cognitive control. First, we provide an overview of the conflict-monitoring theory, discuss neurophysiological and behavioral markers of monitoring and control adaptation, and introduce the affective-signaling hypothesis. In a second part, we review relevant studies that address the questions of (i) whether conflict elicits negative affect, (ii) whether negative affect is monitored, and (iii) whether affect modulates control. In sum, the reviewed literature supports the claim that conflict and errors trigger negative affect and provides some support for the claim that affect modulates control. However, studies on the monitoring of negative affect and the influence of phasic affect on control are ambiguous. On the basis of these findings, in a third part, we critically reassess the affective-signaling hypothesis, discuss relevant challenges to this account, and suggest future research strategies.

Situation selection and cognitive conflict: explicit knowledge is necessary for conflict avoidance

Humans transform their environment in order to regulate their own affect. One way to do so is to avoid situations that come with negative rather than positive affect. This selection might not solely bear on expectations of full-blown emotions, but may also be invoked by anticipating the aversiveness of cognitive conflict, when a situation suggests competing behavioural responses. If cognitive conflict is indeed aversive, it may trigger affect regulation goals, which in turn influence choices of situations depending on the magnitude of conflict they contain. People should prefer actions that produce conflict-free situations to actions that produce conflicting situations. In three experiments, participants had to solve a Stroop task by freely choosing between response keys that were either associated with low-conflict or high-conflict in the subsequent trial. We find that people do not automatically prefer actions associated with conflict-free situations to actions that are associated with conflicting situations. They only do so, when they are explicitly informed about the contingency between action and congruency of an upcoming situation. This suggests that cognitive conflict, at least at the level of a standard conflict task as used here, is insufficient to invoke affect regulation processes.

The face of control: Corrugator supercilii tracks aversive conflict signals in the service of adaptive cognitive control

Cognitive control is the ability to monitor, evaluate, and adapt behavior in the service of long‐term goals. Recent theories have proposed that the integral negative emotions elicited by conflict are critical for the adaptive adjustment of cognitive control. However, evidence for the negative valence of conflict in cognitive control tasks mainly comes from behavioral studies that interrupted trial sequences, making it difficult to directly test the link between conflict‐induced affect and subsequent increases in cognitive control. In the present study, we therefore use online measures of valence‐sensitive electromyography (EMG) of the facial corrugator (frowning) and zygomaticus (smiling) muscles while measuring the adaptive cognitive control in a Stroop‐like task. In line with the prediction that conflict is aversive, results showed that conflict relative to non‐conflict trials led to increased activity of the corrugator muscles after correct responses, both in a flanker task (Experiment 1) and in a prime‐probe task (Experiment 2). This conflict‐induced corrugator activity effect correlated marginally with conflict‐driven increases in cognitive control in the next trial in the confound‐minimalized task used in Experiment 2. However, in the absence of performance feedback (Experiment 3), no reliable effect of conflict was observed in the facial muscle activity despite robust behavioral conflict adaptation. Taken together, our results show that facial EMG can be used as an indirect index of the temporal dynamics of conflict‐induced aversive signals and/or effortful processes in particular when performance feedback is presented, providing important new insights into the dynamic affective nature of cognitive control.

Cognitive control plays a pivotal role in goal‐directed behavior. Nevertheless, it still remains elusive what mechanisms determine how cognitive control is recruited. Recent theories have proposed that negative emotions elicited by conflict help to adaptively increase the cognitive control. Although there is indeed accumulating evidence for the negative valence of conflict, no study has yet linked this directly to increased adaptive control. Using valence‐sensitive EMG measures, we here show that conflict is associated with increased activation of the corrugator (frowning) muscle and that the size of this effect predicts the size of conflict‐driven control adjustment in the next trial.

Conflict-Elicited Negative Evaluations of Neutral Stimuli: Testing Overt Responses and Stimulus-Frequency Differences as Critical Side Conditions

Prior research has shown that a stimulus signaling a conflict (such as an incongruent Stroop stimulus) as a prime can elicit more negative evaluations of an otherwise neutral and unrelated stimulus as a target. Yet, there are many side conditions that could at least partly be responsible for such effects like the frequencies of congruent and conflicting stimuli or overt responses to the conflicting stimuli. Here, we tested the influences of stimulus frequencies and overt responses on the strength of this priming effect. In four experiments, we demonstrate that overt responses in-between prime and target do not delete the conflict-elicited evaluation effect (Experiments 1a vs. 1b), while an overall higher frequency of conflicting trials (Experiment 2a) and an overall lower frequency of congruent trials (Experiment 3) can both abolish the priming effect. In contrast, a higher frequency of specific conflicting conditions was ineffective (Experiment 2b). Together, our results confirm that conflict is indeed the origin of the priming of negative evaluations.

It's more than just conflict: The functional role of congruency in the sequential control adaptation

According to the conflict monitoring theory (CMT), one of the most prominent theories of cognitive control, the exertion of cognitive control is triggered by the detection of conflicting response tendencies in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Recent research has challenged this emphasis of response conflicts and has debated whether in addition to shielding after incongruent trials the relaxation after congruent trials also contributes to the sequential adaptation of control. To investigate the functionality of facilitative congruent trials in sequential adaptation of control, we conducted two experiments using a visual (Experiment 1) and an auditory (Experiment 2, preregistered) Simon task with stimuli presented laterally to the left or right (creating response congruent and incongruent trials) or without any particular spatial information (creating neutral trials). Both experiments showed converging results: in the error and reaction time data, the Simon effect was smaller following incongruent trials, larger following congruent trials, and the Simon effect following neutral trials was in-between. Results thus suggest that sequential control adaptations can originate from two processes: Increased shielding in response to incongruent trials and relaxation in response to congruent trials. Argumentations for a functional role of congruent and incongruent trials in the sequential adaptation of control suggest a more general theory of fluency monitoring instead of mere conflict monitoring. In addition, such extensions of the CMT provide theoretical explanations of how control is ever relaxed in response conflict tasks after being enhanced by conflict in the first place. Last but not least, the results may also be taken as a further hint that congruent stimuli may provide a positive affective signal for control relaxation just it has already been shown for incongruent stimuli as aversive signals for the up-regulation of control (shielding).