Dual processes in fear and anxiety: no effects of cognitive load on the predictive value of implicit measures

ABSTRACT

Dual process models posit that combinations of impulsive and reflective processes drive behaviour, and that the capacity to engage in effortful cognitive processing moderates the relation between measures of impulsive or reflective processes and actual behaviour. When cognitive resources are low, impulsive processes are more likely to drive behaviour, while when cognitive resources are high, reflective processes will drive behaviour. In our current study, we directly addressed this hypothesis by comparing the capacity of implicit and explicit measures to predict fear and anxiety, either with or without additional cognitive load. In Experiment 1 (N = 83), only explicit measures of spider fear were predictive of spider avoidance, and manipulating cognitive load did not affect these relations. Experiment 2 (N = 70) confirmed these findings, as the capacity of explicit and implicit measures to predict self-reported and physiological responses to a social stressor was not moderated by cognitive load. In two experiments, we thus found no empirical support for the central dual process model assumption that cognitive control moderates the predictive value of implicit and explicit measures. While implicit measures and dual process accounts may still be valuable, we show that results in this field are not necessarily replicable and inconsistent.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual process models
• predictive value of implicit measures
• cognitive load
• implicit association test
• attentional bias

Acknowledgements

At the time of the study, Bram Van Bockstaele was a post-doctoral research fellow of the Research Priority Area Yield of the University of Amsterdam. Helle Larsen is partly funded by Research Priority Area Yield of the University of Amsterdam. The authors thank Michiel Koenraadt and Gabi Terzić for their assistance with the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Open practice and data availability statement

Neither of the experiments reported in this article was formally preregistered. The original scripts (excluding copy-righted stimulus materials), raw data, descriptions of data transformations, transformed data, outlier analyses, and results that were used in both experiments are accessible in the following OSF data depository: doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/9XFCD.

Notes

1 More detailed power analyses are provided in the online supplement.

2 This regression model violated the assumption of independent errors (Durbin-Watson = 0.82), indicating that it may not generalise beyond our sample.

3 More detailed power analyses are provided in the online supplement.