Prior cognitive activity implicitly modulates subsequent emotional responses to subliminally presented emotional stimuli

It has been reported that engagement in several kinds of cognitive activity can successfully inhibit unpleasant emotions.
In this study, we tried to replicate the previous finding that cognitive activity can modulate subsequent psychological and
physiological emotional processes and to investigate whether prior cognitive activity can attenuate implicit emotional processes
triggered by subliminal emotional stimuli. Sixty students were randomly divided into three groups (cognitive task group, noncognitive
task group, control group). The cognitive task group was asked to engage in an n-back task, while the control group was asked to stay calm. The noncognitive task group was asked to do a handgrip-squeezing
task. All participants then engaged in a version of a subliminal affective priming task where they were unconsciously exposed
to affectively negative pictures. The cognitive task group showed lower negative experiences after the subliminal affective
priming task and a substantial reduction in their heart rate responses, as compared with the other groups. These results provide
evidence that engagement in cognitive activity can attenuate emotional processes in an automatic and unconscious manner.