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Ego involvement and effort: Cardiovascular, electrodermal, and performance effects
Author(s) -
Gendolla Guido H. E.,
Richter Michael
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2005.00314.x
Subject(s) - psychology , id, ego and super ego , reactivity (psychology) , blood pressure , task (project management) , coping (psychology) , ego depletion , skin conductance , heart rate , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , social psychology , clinical psychology , medicine , self control , alternative medicine , management , pathology , biomedical engineering , economics
Abstract An experiment with N =52 university students manipulated ego involvement (low vs. high) and task difficulty (unfixed vs. easy) of a letter detection task. In accordance with the theoretical predictions about the role of ego involvement in active coping, high ego involvement increased the performance‐related reactivity of systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, and also the number of unspecific skin conductance responses when task difficulty was unfixed (“do your best”). Ego involvement had no impact on autonomic reactivity when task difficulty was easy due to a fixed low performance standard. Furthermore, participants in the ego involvement/unfixed condition, where autonomic reactivity was relatively strong, committed significantly fewer errors in the letter detection task than those in the other conditions, reflecting an association between mental effort and performance.