The Impact Of (Un)Conscious Money Priming On Conflict Adaptation Effect

In daily life, people always adjust behavior according to precious experience to accomplish current task better. For example, we usually say some idiom like "lessons drawn from others’ mistakes; A fall into the pit, a gain in your wit; experience, if not forgotten, is a guide for the future", which is talking about the importance of experience for people’s life. In order to understanding why people own this kind of ability, psychologists would apply the Stroop, Flanker or Simon paradigm to discover the secret. The effect which could be induced by the three paradigm is called conflict adaptation effect, or Gratton effect, which is refer to as the influence of the experience toward the afterward conflicts. In other words, the brain would solve the current problem depend on previous experience. Psychologists usually use the conflict adaptation effect to research the experience problem.Currently, three theories about the conflict adaptation effect were brought up: conflict monitoring theory, feature integration theory, learning account. Researchers make a lot of work to discuss the influence factors about the conflict adaptation effect, including the working memory, attention resource, motivation and mood, and they focus more about the problem of the influence of reward toward conflict adaptation effect. This problem is so controversial. Some researches have indicated that reward would lower the conflict adaptation effect; but another research has also indicated that reward would enhance the conflict adaptation effect. After debate, some scholar suggested that whether the conflict adaptation effect would decrease or increased by reward is dependent on the situation of reward. The unconditional reward would counteract the conflict adaptation effect, and the task relevant reward would improve the conflict adaptation effect. But this is just a suggestion, the evidence is not enough.Money is significant for people’s life. In psychological lab, researcher use many money prime method to research the influence of money toward behavior and cognitive process. Recently, there is breakthrough finding about the money problem. It has been indicated that the unconscious monetary reward could influence behavior and cognition. However, the influence of conscious and unconscious money to the conflict adaptation effect has not been focused. Therefore, the current study wants to discuss the conscious and unconscious monetary reward toward the conflict adaptation effect.In this study, we use monetary cue, in a color Stroop task, with the aim to explore the three problems concerning the impact of conscious and unconscious money on conflict adaptation effect.1) Does money affect conflict adaptation effect? If does, then how, impairing or boosting? 2) Does the effect exist even though subject could not see the monetary reward clearly? 3) Does the reward sensitivity regulate the effect? In Experiment 1, Using a monetary reward priming paradigm that allow us to dissect the performance effects of rewards (i.e., coins of different value) into conscious and unconscious level. At the beginning of each run, a reward (1 Yuan and 1 Cent) was displayed, either subliminally or supliminally. Participants could earn the reward depend on their correct responses to each trial of the run. Unexpectedly, results indicate that higher reward (1 Yuan) eliminated the conflict adaptation, and nothing was found in the unconscious condition. Therefore, depend on previous research, we propose that the positivity of reward cues was the reason to abolish the conflict adaptation. Participants could avoid punishment contingent upon their correct responses to each trial of the run; as a result,1 Cent coin became a positive cue (In Experiment 1, the 1 Yuan is a. In Experiment 2, we induced the punishment, in the one hand, high money kept the higher motivation, on the other hand, changed the positivity of monetary cue (in this condition, the lower monetary cue-1 cent became the positive cue, and the I Yuan became a negative cue). Results support our proposal:lower reward (1 Cent) eliminates the conflict adaptation. In addition, we could not find any evidence that unconscious monetary reward have effect on the conflict adaptation in both experiments, depend on previously research, we suggested that this result may cause by the positive mood induced by the monetary cue. Moreover, the Experiment 2 also could not discover any evidence could prove the result that subliminally monetary cue could have influence on the conflict adaptation effect.To sum up, the results of this study show that money do affect conflict adaptation effect, a high level cognitive process, when monetary cue is a positivity cue for the participants, it could influence the conflict adaptation, depend on previously research, we thought it may be caused by the positivity of the monetary cue. Moreover, the current research could not find any evidence to reveal that the monetary priming could have any effect on the conflict adaptation subliminally. The reason for this result may due to that the conflict adaptation effect is a high level cognitive process, but the subliminally monetary priming could only influence the fundamental process, which depends on the positivity of monetary cue. At last, we also verified the previous result that one’s sensitivity toward the reward could forecast the degree of conflict adaptation. Our study will provide inspiration and reference for the follow-up in academic study.