Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: According to McClelland, Koestner and Weinberger (1989) implicit motives are motivational dispositions that operate without any conscious effort or awareness. They are learned through prelinguistic affective experiences in early childhood and are aroused by nonverbal incentive cues later in life, presumably through conditioned associations between the cue and the subsequent change in affect (Atkinson, 1957; McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953). In fact, it is the capacity to feel (or anticipate) satisfaction during the attainment of a certain class of incentives that constitutes the core of an implicit motive (Atkinson, 1957). Thus, in the case of need for power, for example, the amount of pleasure that people derive from having impact over others should vary as a function of their dispositional need for power – the stronger the motive, the stronger the affect involved when being in an power-relevant situation. Three studied tested this affect-amplifying function of implicit motives using facial electromyography (EMG) as an indicator of affect. More precisely, the corrugator supercilii, which draws the brow down and together into a frown, is activated when people experience negative affect or distress, whereas the zygomaticus major which pulls the corners of the mouth back and up into a smile, is linked to the strength of positive affect (e.g., Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert, & Lang, 2001; Larsen, Norris & Cacioppo, 2003). The first study described in Chapter 2 investigated the affective components of the need for achievement, nAch. We had asked participants to complete a Picture Story Exercise (PSE) optimized for the measurement of the implicit achievement motive, nAch. Then, they worked on a computerized version of the d2-test of attention. While random positive or negative self-referenced feedback was given, electromyographic (EMG) data was gathered from the corrugator supercilii (frown muscle). We found that people high compared to low in nAch performed faster on the d2 test and showed a higher maximum in corrugator activity when being confronted with negative performance feedback, as well as a more pronounced subsequent down-regulation of corrugator activity. We did not find this pattern of corrugator activity following positive feedback. Furthermore, we were interested in the nature of the relationship between nAch, affect regulation and task performance and hypothesized affect regulation after negative feedback to mediate the relationship between nAch and the performance on the d2 test. This hypothesis could not be confirmed, however. The second study described in Chapter 3 was about the need for affiliation, nAff. Participants first completed the Picture Story Exercise to measure nAff and were then involved in an interaction with an experimenter while their corrugator activity was measured with EMG. The experimenter was either smiling throughout the interaction or keeping a neutral face which should be aversive for people high in nAff since it signals a lack of involvement. As expected, we found a higher corrugator activity for people high in nAff compared to people low in nAff when the experimenter kept a neutral facial expression throughout the interaction but not when he/she was smiling. This confirms the idea that nAff has an affect-amplifying function, that is, interindividual differences in nAff are manifest in differences in the strength of affect when a person is exposed to motive-relevant incentives or disincentives in form of a smile or a neutral face. The third study described in Chapter 4 extended the point of view by analyzing all three motives, nAff, nAch and nPow and EMG measures from three muscles, namely the corrugator, the zygomatic and the orbicularis. Participants were shown positive and negative pictures of motive-relevant contents and were instructed to either react naturally or suppress their affect. The results confirmed that some affective reactions to motive-relevant pictures were moderated by implicit motives. In the natural condition (i.e., when participants were viewing pictures without any further instructions) we found that men high in nAff showed higher zygomatic activity when viewing motive-relevant pictures (regardless of picture valence) than men low in nAff. Likewise, people high in nAch differed from people low in nAch when viewing motive-relevant pictures, with higher zygomatic values for most intervals. Furthermore, as far as the suppression of muscle activity is concerned, we found that high nAff men suppressed their zygomatic activity more than low nAff men. Likewise, when people high in nPow suppressed their corrugator activity viewing negative motive-relevant pictures, their activity was lower than the one shown by people low in nPow. Chapter 5 gives a summary of the most important results and discusses the three studies in terms of their meaning for the concept of implicit motives.
Author: Annette Kordik
Language: English
Subfield: Applied Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3134400584