Implicit Error Monitoring and Perceived Eco-Anxiety: The Relationship Between Environmental Dimension and Personal Variables

Environmental problems influence cognitive and emotional responses. Eco-emotions like eco-anxiety, eco-guilt and eco-grief have an impact on how individuals perceive responsibility and regulate behavior. This study investigates how perceived environmental issues shape conflict monitoring, in particular, how eco-emotions (Ágoston, et al., 2022) and personal variables contribute to regulating cognitive and behavioral reactions. Thirty-two participants completed a battery of questionnaires and three implicit tasks: a Single Category IAT, that evaluates implicit attitudes toward environmental themes, an Eco-Flanker Task, that measures implicit conflict monitoring and cognitive control by embedding the classic Flanker paradigm within environmental responsibility scenarios and lastly the Pollution Distancing task that studies environmental decision-making and moral cost evaluation. Questionnaires studied eco-emotions, anxiety, empathy and pro-environmental behaviors. The Eco-Flanker Task revealed two main effects. First, participants responded more slowly in the pollution condition than in the no-pollution condition, this can suggest that perceived environmental responsibility increases cognitive load. Second, incongruent trials produced slower reaction times than congruent ones, confirming the expected conflict-monitoring effect of the Flanker task. Correlation analyses showed that higher levels of eco-grief, eco-guilt and personal distress were associated with a larger congruence effect, meaning more difficulty regulating cognitive conflict. Environmental degradation can increase cognitive load during conflict monitoring. Eco-emotions modulate this process, showing that emotional involvement in climate issues influences implicit cognitive control. The results support linking eco-emotions with processes of decision-making. The small sample size limits generalizability, but findings encourage deeper investigation on how environmental awareness shapes cognitive regulation in ecological contexts.