On the Motivational Primacy of the Individual Self: ‘I’ Is Stronger than ‘We’

The self‐concept is dynamic, with momentary definition shifting from a representation of self as a unique and independent social agent to an undifferentiated and interchangeable group member. Indeed, the individual self and collective self are fundamental components of the self‐concept, with each being important and meaningful to human experience. However, are those selves equally important and meaningful? We review a program of research empirically testing three competing hypotheses that suggests that the motivational core of human experience is (a) the individual self, (b) the collective self, or (c) determined by contextual factors that make a given self momentarily accessible. The research furnished unanimous and consistent evidence that the individual self is the motivationally primary form of self‐definition.     

Being distinctive versus being conspicuous: The effects of numeric status and sex-stereotyped tasks on individual performance in groups

Being in the numeric minority (e.g., being a solo woman in a group of men) influences how well a person performs within a work group. But being the solo member is only one way in which people can be atypical in a group; a person can also represent a social or demographic category that has not typically been associated with the task that the group is working on. Using a design with four categories of group composition (minority, balanced, majority, homogeneous) and two categories of tasks (sex-typical, sex-atypical) we found that the sex composition of the group interacted with the sex typicality of the task to influence both positive deferrals by group members and individual performance in groups. But, rather than consistently reducing performance as prior research has suggested, being numerically atypical enhanced individual performance when the task was typical for that person’s sex. Further, positive deferrals mediated between the interaction of numeric composition and task typicality in influencing individual performance suggesting that both majority group members and the solo member affect one another’s performance in groups. We conclude by discussing why understanding the interplay between these two sources of stereotyping, numeric composition and task typicality, is important for understanding the social nature of individual performance in groups.     

Interdependence,social motives,and outcome satisfaction in multiparty negotiation

What makes negotiators satisfied with their outcomes? In this study, we examined whether interpersonal interdependence, in the context of multi‐party multi‐issue negotiation, affected negotiators' satisfaction with their individual and group outcomes. We integrated principles from interdependence, social comparison, and social value theories to generate hypotheses about the social‐evaluative nature of satisfaction with negotiation outcomes. Controlling for differences in quality of individual outcomes, we found a positive association between satisfaction and individual outcome and a negative association between satisfaction and group outcome. Relative to those with prosocial social value orientation, negotiators with an individualistic social value orientation were less satisfied with the group outcome, regardless of induced motivational orientation. Neither motivational orientation nor an interaction between motivational orientation and social value orientation were related to satisfaction. We discuss the implications of our results for research on interdependence processes in negotiations and the role of social motives. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Köhler rediscovered: The anti-ringelmann effect

A current focus of research on individual versus group performance is social loafing, the decrease in individual effort that occurs when the individual works within a cooperative group rather than alone. This result is also referred to as the ‘Ringelmann effect’. But what has been ignored until now is the increment in group performance through systematic variation of individual performance rates within the group, although this effect was reported by Moede (1927) in the same article which influenced research on the Ringlemann effect. Within a narrow range of performance rates from 4.5 to 3.5 in dyads Kohler found an increase in group performance to a level above that of the individual performances. Kohler obtained comparable results from 3–person, and 4–person groups using the experimental procedure of weight lifting and winch turning. This phenomenon should be called the ‘Kohler effect’; although it is still to be replicated with modern ergometers.     

期望与绩效的关系:调节定向的调节作用

经典动机理论认为高期望能提高绩效水平,本研究结合调节定向理论进一步回答这种效应"何时"存在或"如何"产生的问题。研究1通过测量期望水平、并用任务框架操作调节定向,检验了情景启动的调节定向对期望与行为间关系的影响;研究2采取更严格的被试内设计通过任务难度操作期望,考察了作为个体长期差异的调节定向的作用。结果表明:①调节定向调节成功期望与绩效之间的关系:对于促进定向,成功期望与绩效正相关;对于预防定向,期望与绩效相关不显著。②动机可以部分解释调节定向与期望的交互作用机制:高水平的成功期望会提高促进定向个体的动机强度,进而产生高的绩效结果;其对预防定向个体的动机强度的影响不显著。     

Reward and purpose as incentives for children differing in locus of control expectancies.

The Intellectual Achievement Responsibility Questionnaire was used to classify 248 fourth- and fifth-graders as internals, mediums, and externals on the internal-external locus of control personality dimension. Subjects were assigned to four treatment groups resulting from the manipulation of intrinsic (purpose vs. non purpose) and extrinsic (reward vs. no reward) motivational conditions and administered a coding task with number of figures coded as the dependent variable. An analysis of variance with IE, reward, purpose, sex, and grade as factors yielded significant purpose, sex, grade, and IE X Reward X Purpose effects. The performance of internals was found to be unaffected by motivational manipulations; purpose together with reward improved the performance of mediums: reward and purpose (individually and together) improved the performance of externals. Implications for future investigation of the IE construct and the social psychology of psychological research were discussed.     

Civic Knowledge of High School Students in Israel: Personal and Contextual Determinants

Past research on civic education suggests that students' performance is largely influenced by individual socioeconomic background and motivational factors. There has been little attention to the effects of school and classroom ideological and social attributes, such as the socioeconomic make-up of the school or classroom, or how interested in politics are a student's classmates. The results of the present study support the contention that contextual effects play a vital role in determining students' civic knowledge scores. Analysis of Israeli 11^th graders' performance on the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) civic knowledge test shows that while individual backgrounds and motivations play a significant role, school and classroom contexts greatly contribute to civic knowledge acquisition.     

Pubertal development and behavior: Hormonal activation of social and motivational tendencies

Adolescence is a time of dramatic changes including rapid physical growth, the onset of sexual maturation, the activation of new drives and motivations, and a wide array of social and affective changes and challenges. This review focuses on behavioral changes in this interval and is organized by the claim that a key set of these adolescent changes are part of a more general re-orientation of social behavior. More specifically we hypothesize that pubertal maturation is associated with the activation of social and motivational tendencies, which in turn influence behavior and emotion in adolescence depending upon interactions with social context. We focus on evidence for two examples of these motivational changes: (1) increases in sensation-seeking (motivational tendency to want to experience high-intensity, exciting experiences) and (2) stronger natural interest in—and pursuit of—contact with peers and potential romantic partners. We consider how these motivational changes contribute to the broader social re-orientation of adolescence, including exploration of social experiences, development of skills and knowledge relevant to taking on adult social roles, individuation from family, and establishment of an individual identity, all of which represent core developmental tasks during this period in the life span ( 9, 16 and 62). The paper also emphasizes the importance of investigating and understanding the direct influences of puberty on behavior and disentangling these from the broader set of changes during adolescent development.     

Eyes as windows to the soul: Gazing behavior is related to personality

Gazing is a fundamental human behavior with important cognitive, affective, motivational, and social underpinnings that is likely to have produced individual differences linking it to major personality traits. If traits play a substantial role in gazing, they should predict eye movement parameters above and beyond stimuli without meaningful and topical information. The current eye-tracking study (N = 242) demonstrated with linear mixed models that personality (Big Five, Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System) predicts number of fixations, mean fixation duration, and dwelling time in two different abstract animations. Specifically, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and the Behavioral Activation System were related to eye movement parameters. Prospective research in studying links between dispositions and gazing is discussed.     

Local and global effects of motivation on cognitive control

Motivation has been found to enhance cognitive control, but the mechanisms by which this occurs are still poorly understood. Cued motivational incentives (e.g., monetary rewards) can modulate cognitive processing locally??that is, on a trial-by-trial basis (incentive cue effect). Recently, motivational incentives have also been found to produce more global and tonic changes in performance, as evidenced by performance benefits on nonincentive trials occurring within incentive blocks (incentive context effect). In two experiments involving incentivized cued task switching, we provide systematic evidence that the two effects are dissociable. Through behavioral, diffusion-modeling, and individual-differences analyses, we found dissociations between local and global motivational effects that were linked to specific properties of the incentive signals (i.e., timing), while also ruling out alternative interpretations (e.g., practice and speed??accuracy trade-off effects). These results provide important clues regarding the neural mechanisms by which motivation exerts both global and local influences on cognitive control.     

Social facilitation

Video-recording procedures have been used in previous research as a motivational manipulation. The present study investigated the permanent recording of behavior as a manipulation of evaluation apprehension and its effects upon behavioral performance and upon autonomic arousal. Twenty-four subjects (12 males, 12 females) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions formed by completely crossing two levels of audience status (peer or authority) with two levels of behavioral record (non-permanent or permanent). Another 24 subjects were assigned to an external control group to the 2×2 design. Subjects' performance on a hidden-word task and their arousal level (as assessed by the Palmar Sweat Index) were measured. Analyses of variance results showed a significant performance (p<.05) and a significant arousal (p<.05) difference between the behavioral record conditions as predicted. The control group was also found to be significantly (p<.05) different from the experimental groups on the behavioral performance measure. The results were related to previous research findings and interpreted within the context of the evaluation apprehension notion presented within social facilitation research.The author would like to thank Angelia Mellors, Valerie K. Golish, and Judy Cohen for serving as experiments, and Susan L. Doman and Cheryl Primmer for scoring the PSI measures.     

Achievement goals and gender effects on multidimensional anxiety in national elite sport

ObjectivesThe present paper examined the roles of achievement orientation, perception of the motivational climate, and perceived ability on performance trait anxiety in a sample of national level elite athletes. Gender differences in these relationships were also examined.DesignCross-sectional.MethodsOne hundred and ninety national elite athletes (male, n=101 and female, n=89) from individual sport completed Norwegian measures of goal orientation, perceived motivational climate, perceived ability, and multidimensional performance anxiety.ResultsFemale and male national elite athletes were similar in achievement orientations and had similar perceptions of the motivational climate. Females reported higher levels of performance worry, concentration disruption and somatic anxiety than males. Orientations did not predict performance anxiety for either gender, however perceptions of a performance climate predicted performance worry for both genders, and concentration disruption for females. Perceived ability predicted less performance worry for females and males. Perceived ability did not moderate the effects of the perceived motivational climate on performance anxiety, and neither did the results meet the criteria for testing mediation.ConclusionsThe extant motivational climate has an effect on performance anxiety, and coaches would be well advised to consider this when working with national elite athletes.     

Finding a home: Developmental and neurobiological perspectives on cultural models

This article looks at cultural models in the light of human development, and neurobiological findings in motivation, learning, and cognition. It is argued that at the individual level, the acquisition of cultural models relies on several innate, neurobiologically based motivational, learning, and cognitive systems. These are: (a) a primary motivation to form social bonds which is driven by affect; (b) highly specialized social learning circuits, involving, but not limited to, mirror neuron systems, that facilitate the encoding of social information through implicit, embodied, imitational learning processes; and (c) the formation of culturally based templates for behavior and cognition centered around structures, collectively known as the “default mode network,” which is essential to self‐understanding, autobiographical memory, social cognition, prospection, and theory‐of‐mind. Cultural models, it is argued, are acquired through innate motivational processes that tie the individual emotionally to a secure base of familiar people and customs. This instinctual desire for proximity to others facilitates the efficient, largely implicit, patterning of knowledge and expectations. Shared knowledge and expectations, in turn, create a common, mostly implicit or unconscious, experience of subjectivity within groups. This allows each individual to automatically and effortlessly interact with similarly enculturated others.     

Multiple group memberships promote health and performance following pathway transitions in junior elite cricket

Coping well with transitions (e.g., progressing from youth to senior level, transferring between clubs, retiring from sport) is an integral part of elite athletes’ lives—poor adjustment can lead to dropout, poor performance, and even alcohol and drug abuse. Recent research from the wider social psychology literature has demonstrated that people’s social group memberships may represent a key resource upon which people can draw when navigating various transitions. In this study, conducted in conjunction with the England and Wales Cricket Board, we investigated the importance of group memberships for the health and performance of young cricketers transitioning into high-performance pathways. Over a two-year period, 257 cricketers (M_age = 15.53) completed between 1 and 5 questionnaires, for an average of 1.77 questionnaires, resulting in 456 unique responses. Linear mixed models showed that cricketers who belonged to more pre-transition groups, and who belonged to a greater number of new groups after the transition, demonstrated greater post-transition health and performance. The continuity of cricketers’ group memberships across the transition also had a positive but less pronounced impact on their health. Finally, there was also evidence that group membership effects were partly dependent on the time since transition, with effects more prominent soon after the transition than later. Results are timely, given recent research and applied interest in athlete development pathways, and the mental health of those on such pathways. They also have important implications for the design—and continued monitoring—of elite-performance pathways. Indeed, the England and Wales Cricket Board has already implemented policy changes based upon the present study’s findings.     

Structural model of employee involvement in skill development activity: The role of individual differences

We extend prior research on involvement in employee development activity by including prominent individual difference constructs that have been previously ignored in this area of research. These include two important personality characteristics (conscientiousness and openness to experience), mental ability and goal orientation constructs. We tested both mediated and direct effects of the variables. The sequence of relationships observed in the model was: general personality traits → development domain individual and situational variables → development domain motivational variables → involvement in development. Personality had indirect (mediated) effects on motivational and involvement constructs while goal orientation, as a development domain individual variable, had direct effects on motivational constructs. Mental ability had no effects. The study also replicated core relationships from prior research, but did so using an Internet sample and response medium. The model presented provides the most complete picture of behavior in this area to date. Important implications for advancement of theory, research and practice in the area of employee development behavior are discussed.     

Influence of perceived and preferred coach feedback on youth athletes' perceptions of team motivational climate

ObjectivesThis study examined youth ice hockey players' perceptions of individual feedback received from their coach, and the agreement and discrepancies between preferred and perceived coach feedback patterns, on athletes' perceptions of team motivational climate. The following research questions were answered: How does agreement in perceived and preferred coach feedback relate to task- and ego-involving motivational climate? How does the degree of discrepancy between perceived and preferred coach feedback relate to motivational climate? How does the direction of the discrepancy between perceived and preferred coach feedback relate to motivational climate?DesignThis study used non-probability based sampling within a cross-sectional (survey) design.MethodAthletes (n = 70) completed a self-report survey comprised of measures of coaching feedback and motivational climate. The data were examined using polynomial regression and response surface analysis.ResultsLinear associations were observed between coaching feedback and motivational climate, and unique associations between the perceived and preferred coach feedback discrepancies were distinctly related to increased perceptions of both task- and ego-involved motivational climates.ConclusionsThe type of feedback, purpose of the feedback, and agreement or discrepancy in perceptions and preferences for different feedback styles are important to understanding task- and ego-involved motivational climate in youth sport. Coaching programs should assist coaches in learning their athletes' preferences for positive and negative feedback in sport and matching these preferences with their individual feedback styles.     

Assessing threats of targeted group violence: contributions from social psychology.

Recent increases in domestic and international acts of extremist violence perpetrated against American citizens have prompted an increased need for information to help understand and evaluate the threat posed to U.S. targets by extremist groups and their individual members. The purpose of this paper is to (i) suggest the potential relevance of social psychological research on group behavior for understanding and assessing threats of extremist group violence; and, (ii) encourage more systematic research on group violence to further inform assessments of group risk. Approaching the issue from the levels of group behavior, and of individual behavior within a group context, the article summarizes research on key principles of group behavior, and the effects of group membership on individual behavior; proposes specific questions derived from these principles for consideration in evaluating risk for violence by groups, and by individuals influenced by groups; and suggests further research needs.     

Group cohesion and relatedness as predictors of self-determined motivation and burnout in adolescent female athletes

ObjectivesAthlete burnout is the result of a maladaptive sport experience that is influenced by the social context. A salient social contextual feature of youth sport is group cohesion. Cohesion may link with burnout through its association with relatedness and self-determined motivation. The current study was designed to test a model in which cohesion associates with burnout by way of relatedness and self-determined motivation.DesignCross-sectional survey-based study.MethodFemale youth soccer athletes (N = 276; M age = 14.9 years, SD = 1.3) completed measures of task and social cohesion, relatedness, self-determined motivation, and burnout.ResultsTask (β = 0.26) and social (β = 0.59) cohesion associated with perceptions of relatedness. In turn, relatedness positively linked with self-determined motivation (β = 0.38), which in turn negatively associated with global burnout (β = −0.79). The indirect effects from task cohesion to burnout (β = −0.08) and from social cohesion to burnout (β = −0.18) by way of relatedness and self-determined motivation were significant.ConclusionsResults support the proposed model whereby greater cohesion associates with an athlete’s feelings of relatedness, which links to more self-determined motivation and, consequently, lower burnout perceptions. Future research is needed to assess support for causality of these links and explore how contextual factors such as the teammate-created motivational climate contributes to group cohesion and relatedness perceptions within this burnout model.     

Achievement goal orientations and motivational outcomes in youth sport: The role of social orientations

ObjectivesSocial goal orientations, which reflect ways of conceptualizing competence in terms of social relationships with others, have been researched minimally in the physical domain. While the relationship between task and ego orientations and motivational outcomes has been well-studied, the link of friendship, group acceptance, and coach praise orientations with enjoyment, perceived physical competence, and intrinsic motivation warrants further study.MethodMale and female middle-school students (N = 303) completed questionnaires assessing task, ego, coach praise, friendship, and group acceptance orientations; enjoyment; perceived physical competence; and motivation. Two approaches to data analysis (variable-centered, person-centered) examined whether social orientations were significantly related to motivational outcomes among adolescents.ResultsVariable-centered analysis (i.e., canonical correlation) showed that social orientations were related to enjoyment, perceived physical competence, and intrinsic motivation. Person-centered analyses (i.e., cluster analysis, MANOVA) classified participants with similar patterns of goal orientations and then compared the emergent groups on motivational outcomes. Participants who defined success using either higher task, ego, and social goal orientations or higher friendship and lower ego orientations reported the most adaptive responses (higher perceived competence, enjoyment, and intrinsic motivation).ConclusionsSocial orientations in sport are important to consider alongside task and ego orientations in research stemming from achievement goal theory. Defining success or competence in terms of social relationships can have positive motivational benefits in sport.     

The Personality Bases of Ideology: A One-Year Longitudinal Study

ABSTRACT

The cross-lagged effects of the Big-Five personality dimensions on Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) were examined over 1 year (N = 112). Consistent with the Dual Process Cognitive-Motivational Model, SDO and RWA exhibited markedly different personality bases. Low Agreeableness and unexpectedly high Extraversion predicted change in the motivational goal for group-based dominance and superiority (SDO), whereas Openness to Experience predicted change in the motivational goal for social cohesion and collective security (RWA). Neuroticism and Conscientiousness did not predict change in SDO or RWA over time. These findings extend previous cross-sectional (correlational) research and indicate that key dimensions of personality (primarily Agreeableness and Openness to Experience) are an important temporal antecedent of the group-based motivational goals underlying individual differences in prejudice.