Assessing implicit motives with an online version of the picture story exercise

The Impact of Different Thematic Apperception Test Administration Methods on Narrative Length and Story Richness as Measured by the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global Rating Method (SCORS-G)

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is the second most commonly used performance-based task in clinical practice. However, traditional TAT administration is time-consuming and raises accessibility issues. This study examines the effect of administration modifications (i.e., examiner handwriting versus typing, examiner recording versus participant recording, and re-prompting versus no re-prompting) on narrative length and richness as measured by the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global Rating Method (SCORS-G). A four-card TAT protocol was administered to 150 college students under one of five conditions. The resulting narratives were scored by two trained raters using the SCORS-G. MANOVA procedures showed (a) no significant differences between examiner handwriting versus typing; (b) the shortest, blandest narratives were produced when the examiner recorded the narratives without re-prompting; and (c) the longest, richest narratives were produced when the participant typed the narratives with re-prompts on the computer screen. Clinical and research implications and future directions will be discussed.

Stuck in short-term, daily operations, or not?: Unraveling SME's long-term orientation

Long-term orientation (LTO) is an essential strategic option for firms to shape their future success, in particular for SMEs which are often submerged by daily operations. Surprisingly, little is known about the underlying personal and contextual drivers of LTO in an SME context. To unravel why some SME entrepreneurs adopt an LTO, while others seem to be stuck in short term and daily operations, we consider the (interacting) impact of both personal and contextual drivers. We carefully select well known drivers for their impact on various other aspects of SME's LTO: Need for achievement, as a personal driver, and the entrepreneur's perception of the institutional entrepreneurial support (PIES), as a contextual driver. The latter consists of a regulative, normative and cognitive institutional dimension. Based on a study on 176 SMEs in an emerging country, Indonesia, we confirm that both personal as well as contextual drivers individually and interactively impact an SME's LTO. Specifically, when highly achievement motivated entrepreneurs perceive that institutional regulations support entrepreneurial activities, they tend to adopt a higher level of LTO. We discuss implications for SMEs and policy makers, and provide suggestions for future research.

Social Support as a Stress Buffer or Stress Amplifier and the Moderating Role of Implicit Motives: Protocol for a Randomized Study (Preprint)

Background

Previous research shows that providing social support in socioevaluative stress situations reduces participants’ stress responses. This stress-buffer effect, however, does not hold for everybody, and some studies even found a stress-amplifying effect of social support. Motive disposition research suggests that social motives (affiliation and power) lead to differential and sometimes even opposing affective and physiological responses to interpersonal interaction processes. We here integrate both lines of research and hypothesize that participants with strong affiliation motives benefit, while participants with strong power motives do not benefit from social support in terms of psychobiological responses to a given stressor. Further, participants with strong affiliation and power motives are expected to respond to social support with the arousal of motive-specific affects and reproductive hormone responses (affiliation: progesterone; power: estradiol and testosterone). In addition, we test sex differences in the response to social support and in the strengths of social motives.

Objective

The main objective of this study is to test whether social motives and participants’ sex moderate the effects of social support in stressful situations.

Methods

We aim to collect data from 308 participants recruited at our local university. Participants’ social motives are assessed using a standardized measure in motive research (Picture Story Exercise). Then, the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups (TSST-G) is used to experimentally induce psychosocial stress. One group of participants receives social support from an associate of the experimenter, while the control group does not receive social support. Stress responses will be assessed by a modified version of the state anxiety scale of the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory and by physiological indicators of stress (cortisol and α-amylase from saliva samples) at 7 measurement points. Reproductive hormones will be analyzed in 4 of these 7 saliva samples. Heart rate and heart rate variability will be assessed continuously. We will additionally measure participants’ performance in an interview (part of the TSST-G) using a self-developed categorization system.

Results

The Ethics Committee of the University of Constance approved the application to conduct the study on December 18, 2018. Furthermore, the study was retrospectively registered in the German Clinical Trials Register (DKRS; ID: DRKS00028503) on March 09, 2022. The start of the experiment was planned for the beginning of 2019, but was postponed to June 2021 due to COVID-19. Publication of the first results is planned for spring 2023.

Conclusions

Our theory-driven integration of social motives in social support research and the precise analysis of sex differences might disentangle inconsistent findings in TSST research. The more faceted view on individual differences has direct implications for applied contexts as it provides a framework for tailored conceptualizations of social support programs.

Trial Registration

German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00028503; https://tinyurl.com/5a87x4da

International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)

PRR1-10.2196/39509

Web-Based Research in Psychology

Abstract. The present article reviews web-based research in psychology. It captures principles, learnings, and trends in several types of web-based research that show similar developments related to web technology and its major shifts (e.g., appearance of search engines, browser wars, deep web, commercialization, web services, HTML5…) as well as distinct challenges. The types of web-based research discussed are web surveys and questionnaire research, web-based tests, web experiments, Mobile Experience Sampling, and non-reactive web research, including big data. A number of web-based methods are presented and discussed that turned out to become important in research methodology. These are one-item-one-screen design, seriousness check, instruction manipulation and other attention checks, multiple site entry technique, subsampling technique, warm-up technique, and web-based measurement. Pitfalls and best practices are described then, especially regarding dropout and other non-response, recruitment of participants, and interaction between technology and psychological factors. The review concludes with a discussion of important concepts that have developed over 25 years and an outlook on future developments in web-based research.

Task Enjoyment as an Individual Difference Construct

Are there individual differences in the tendency to enjoy tasks regardless of the tasks' contents or situational determinants? To answer this question, we constructed and validated the six-item Trait Task Enjoyment Scale (TTES). In Study 1, it had an internally consistent one-factor structure (pooled N = 997); good test-retest reliabilities over 1 and 4 months; measurement invariance regarding gender (strong) and time (partial strong); and was not redundant with respect to a large number of theoretically related constructs. In Studies 2 and 3, the TTES predicted self-reported momentary task enjoyment, one of its opposites, boredom, and voluntary persistence in a free-choice paradigm. It did so for various tasks, including thirty diverse tasks presented in vignettes and a memory task in the lab. Results suggest that the TTES may predict momentary task enjoyment regardless of objective task aversiveness or, in this case, equally well for tasks with boring or enjoyable contents. The TTES addresses an important gap in current research on task enjoyment and is an adequately valid and reliable research tool.

Convergent, Discriminant, and Incremental Validity of the Pictorial Attitude Implicit Association Test and the Picture Story Exercise as Measures of the Implicit Power Motive

The Pictorial Attitude Implicit Association Test (PA–IAT) has recently been proposed as new measure of implicit motives. We report a study that provides the first evidence for the convergent validity of the PA–IAT by showing that the PA–IAT correlates significantly with a standard measure of implicit motives [i.e. the Picture Story Exercise (PSE)]. Discriminant validity of the PA–IAT was verified in the sense that the PA–IAT shared virtually no common variance with explicit motive measures. Our analyses revealed that the PA–IAT and PSE can best be conceived as related but distinct measures. We further showed that the PA–IAT had incremental validity in predicting performance on a memory recall task over and above the PSE. In general, our results confirm that the PA–IAT is a valid measure of implicit motives and can serve as valid alternative to the PSE. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Enjoying or refraining from risk? The impact of implicit need for achievement and risk perception on SME internationalization

Purpose

This study aims to explore how an entrepreneur's implicit need for achievement and risk reception contribute to internationalization performance.

Design/methodology/approach

This study involves 176 Indonesian entrepreneurs. The authors use the Operant Motive Test to assess the entrepreneur's implicit needs and apply hierarchical Tobit regression to assess the interplay between implicit need for achievement, risk perception and internationalization.

Findings

The authors show that an entrepreneur's basic needs and risk perception play an essential role in SME internationalization. More specifically, the authors reveal a positive association between the entrepreneur's need for achievement and small and medium enterprises (SME) internationalization. They also show a U-shaped relationship for the moderation effect of risk perception on this relationship. That is, for a high need for achievement-motivated entrepreneur, the level of internationalization is at the highest when risk perception is either very low or very high.

Originality/value

In this study, the authors argue that analyses at the entrepreneur's individual level are indispensable to better understand firm internationalization. The authors argue that the role of psycho-cognitive characteristics of individuals (such as motivational dispositions) received too little attention, compared to factors at the firm or environmental level. This study examines such personality aspects and finds that implicit need for achievement and risk perception impact SME internationalization.

The Interplay of Achievement Motive-Goal Incongruence and State and Trait Self-Control: A Pilot Study Considering Cortical Correlates of Self-Control

Objective: This study utilized different theoretical perspectives to better understand motor performance. We refered to concepts of achievement motive-goal incongruence and assessed cortical correlates of self-control. We assumed that more self-control is required when people act in conformance with an incongruent goal which, in turn, results in impaired performance. We considered the activation of a brain area associated with self-control (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, dLPFC) as a consequence of motive-goal incongruence. Furthermore, we analyzed whether trait self-control buffers the negative effects of achievement motive-goal incongruence. Method: Twenty-eight participants (17 women, mean age: 24 years), whose implicit achievement motives were assessed at the beginning of the study, performed a handgrip task in an achievement goal condition and in three incongruent conditions, while their dLPFC oxygenation was monitored continuously (using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS). Results: None of the two-way interactions (motive × goal condition) reached significance. A significant three-way interaction (motive × trait self-control × goal condition) showed that trait self-control buffered the detrimental effects of incongruence on motor performance. The nature of the three-way interaction predicting dLPFC oxygenation was unexpected. Conclusions: Although our results have to be treated with caution due to a small sample size, we see them as an encouraging starting point for further research on the interplay between motive-goal incongruence and trait and cortical correlates of state self-control that we assume to be important to understand performance in strenuous tasks.

Implicit Motives and Men's Perceived Constraint in Fatherhood

Research shows that implicit motives influence social relationships. However, little is known about their role in fatherhood and, particularly, how men experience their paternal role. Therefore, this study examined the association of implicit motives and fathers’ perceived constraint due to fatherhood. Furthermore, we explored their relation to fathers’ life satisfaction. Participants were fathers with biological children (N = 276). They were asked to write picture stories, which were then coded for implicit affiliation and power motives. Perceived constraint and life satisfaction were assessed on a visual analog scale. A higher implicit need for affiliation was significantly associated with lower perceived constraint, whereas the implicit need for power had the opposite effect. Perceived constraint had a negative influence on life satisfaction. Structural equation modeling revealed significant indirect effects of implicit affiliation and power motives on life satisfaction mediated by perceived constraint. Our findings indicate that men with a higher implicit need for affiliation experience less constraint due to fatherhood, resulting in higher life satisfaction. The implicit need for power, however, results in more perceived constraint and is related to decreased life satisfaction.

Motivational Incongruence and Well-Being at the Workplace: Person-Job Fit, Job Burnout, and Physical Symptoms

Person-environment fit has been identified as a key prerequisite for employee well-being. We investigated to what extent a misfit between motivational needs and supplies at the workplace affects two key health outcomes: burnout and physical symptoms. Individual needs (implicit affiliation and power motives) and environment supplies (motive specific job characteristics) were assessed in an online survey of full time employees (n = 97), using a picture story exercise measuring implicit motives and a scale listing affiliation and power related job characteristics. Outcomes were assessed using the Maslach Burnout Inventory and a checklist of physical symptoms. We conducted polynomial regressions with response surface analysis. Results reveal that motivational incongruence with respect to the affiliation motive was related to high job burnout, while motivational incongruence concerning the power motive predicted increased physical symptoms. This was true for both those with a strong affiliation or power motive and low corresponding job characteristics and those with a weak affiliation or power motive and job characteristics demanding the respective motive. Results hint at potential interventions toward preventing or remedying a lack of needs-supply fit and reducing the risk of impairments of well-being.

Are implicit motives the need to feel certain affect? Motive-affect congruence predicts relationship satisfaction

The authors test the assumption that the core of implicit motives is the desire for particular affective experiences and that motive satisfaction need not be tied to any particular domain. Using the context of romantic relationships, cross-sectional Study 1 and experimental Study 2 showed that people with a high affiliation motive were more satisfied when they experienced more affiliation-specific affect (calmness and relaxation). However, people with a higher power motive were more satisfied in their relationships when they experienced more power-specific affect (strength and excitement) in these relationships. The results support the idea that an implicit motive involves the desire for specific affective experiences and that frequent experiences of one's preferred affect can lead to enhanced satisfaction and well-being in a domain, even one that is not typically associated with that motive.