Cognitively demanding tasks are often perceived as costly, leading to effort avoidance, particularly in populations with motivational impairments. Research on anxiety and cognitive effort are mixed: some suggest anxiety increases effort cost, while others indicate it can motivate engagement. To reconcile these perspectives, we examined the interaction between state and trait anxiety on cognitive effort evaluation and engagement.
We hypothesized that state anxiety enhances task engagement as difficulty increases, which diminishes with higher trait anxiety. We assessed self-reported anxiety and manipulated participants’ affective state in two online samples. Contrary to our hypothesis, in Experiment 1, participants (N = 107) with low trait anxiety reported reduced task engagement under high state anxiety, but only for easy tasks.
This effect was attenuated in participants with higher trait anxiety. This interaction partially replicated in Experiment 2 (N = 572), where the negative effect of state anxiety on engagement was again attenuated in individuals with higher trait anxiety, but was observed across all task difficulty levels rather than being restricted to easy tasks. These findings suggest that trait anxiety may reflect reduced impact of state anxiety on disengagement.
We thank the staff and support at the Donders Institute, Donders Centre of Cognitive Neuroscience. Appreciation goes to our colleagues from the Motivational and Cognitive Control lab and all our participants. This work was supported by ERC Advanced Grant CHEMCONTROL [101054532].
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. These authors contributed equally: Ceyda Sayalı, Emma Heling. Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, Dept of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands Department of Medical Neuroscience, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands The authors declare no competing interests.
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