Conflict can induce negative affect, which may enhance performance in subsequent tasks. Our recent behavirol study showed that the subjective experience of conflict improved performance not only in subsequent conflict (incongruent) trials but also in non-conflict (congruent) trials. However, it remains unclear how fluctuations in conflict-induced negative affect influence performance adjustments. In this electroencephalography (EEG) study, we investigated the influences of subjective experience and implicit regulation of conflict-induced negative affect on subsequent performance, by comparing two conditions: ‘Experience-do’ where participants simply experienced the Stroop stimulus, and ‘Experience-Rating-do’ where they rated their emotional response to the stimulus before responding. Thirty-eight participants performed a modified color-word Stroop task under these conditions. Behaviorally, both experiencing and rating conflict-induced negative affect improved subsequent performance across conflict and non-conflict trials. At the ERP level, the ‘Experience-R-do’ condition showed increased Late Positive Potential (LPP) and P1amplitudes in the preceding phase and decreased conflict slow potential (SP) in the current phase, suggesting lower control demands. In contrast, the ‘Experience-do’ condition showed increased LPP, P1, and conflict SP amplitudes in the current phase, reflecting heightened emotional and cognitive engagement. Notably, improvements in conflict adjustments were linked to distinct mechanisms: increased P1 and reduced conflict SP facilitated performance under the ‘Expereicen-R-do’ condition, while larger LPP was associated with gains in the ‘Experiecne-do’ condition. These findings shed light on the distinct mechanisms by which subjective experience and implicit regulation nof conflict-induced negative affect contribute to adaptive performance adjustments.

Effortful cognitive control enhances performance but often incurs cognitive costs, leading to increased subjective negative emotions. Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation can modulate cognitive control; however, their interplay is complex, and little is known about the underlying mechanism or subjective willingness to engage effortful control processes. The present electroencephalography (EEG) study sought to elucidate underlying mechanisms through which extrinsic and intrinsic motivation synergistically modulate effortful cognitive control during conflict processing. To this end, we employed two variants of the Stroop task (Stroop-Feedback and Stroop-Choice). Extrinsic motivation was induced by evaluative feedback and intrinsic motivation was measured using the Need for Cognition (NFC). Behavioral results showed faster RTs in evaluative compared to neutral feedback, as well as in participants with high NFC relative to low NFC. In addition, after receiving evaluative feedback, participants’ subjective willingness to engage in high-control tasks (70% incongruent trials) was linked to subjective feelings of conflict, which mediated by NFC. At the ERP level, improvements in cognitive control driven by either evaluative feedback or NFC were captured at the conflict SP level. While for feedback-related motivational significance, high-NFC participants exhibited the decreased P3 compared to low-NFC ones. Moreover, the P3, which captured the processing of previous evaluative (negative) feedback, facilitated subsequent behavioral responses in low-NFC participants selectively. These findings suggest that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation independently, rather than interactively, enhance effortful cognitive control, while jointly influencing subjective willingness to allocate effort toward control processes—a process closely linked to negative feelings during prior conflict processing.

Cognitive control is flexible and often based on two competing processing modes: reactive vs. proactive control. This begs the question of how human subjects can flexibly switch between them. In this EEG study, we addressed this question by systematically altering the contingency created between conflict and performance in different conditions. Fifty-eight participants performed the confound-minimized Stroop task wherein either congruent or incongruent trials were selectively reinforced by an evaluative feedback. Behavioral results showed that while reactive control improved the most when congruent trials were reinforced, proactive control actually benefited from the reinforcement of incongruent trials. Interestingly, at the EEG level, we found that proactive control mostly influenced the N450 component, but also increased attention allocated to the stimulus at the occipital P1 level. In comparison, reactive control mostly influenced and boosted evaluative feedback processing at the P3 level. Moreover, we found that although mid-frontal theta was increased by conflict and negative feedback, it did not capture this flexibility in cognitive control, as revealed by these ERP components. These findings suggest that proactive and reactive control can have distinct electrophysiological signatures when specific stimulus and feedback-locked ERP components are considered concurrently.