The effect of a threatening context upon motivation and task‐induced physiological changes

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Abstract
The effect of a threatening context upon tonic task-induced physiological changes was tested in an experiment where 14 male subjects performed a continuous perceptual motor task for 150 s, once with and once without threat of aversive electric shock (counterbalanced order). Task-irrelevant muscular tension increased and skin tmperature decreased over the course of a task, and these gradients were steeper with threat than for the no-threat treatment. Initial heart-rate increase was marked for the threat condition. For respiration, a trend parallel to muscular gradients emerged with no-threat as contrasted with a parallel respiratory-cardiac activation with threat. Subjects'' ratings on items reflecting self-perception responded to the threat manipulation, but ratings on items reflecting task perception remained unaffected.