The relationship between implicit and explicit motives, goal pursuit, and autobiographical memory content during a diary study

This online diary study investigated how motives interact with goal pursuit to predict daily autobiographical experiences. Participants (N = 141) completed measures of implicit and explicit achievement, provided daily memories and reports of their goal pursuit during a 3-week diary period. A stronger implicit achievement motive at the onset of the study was associated with more agentic (and fewer communal) autobiographical content. Goal progress was linked with using more agentic words, while goal attainability was related to using more communal words. Interactions between motives and goal pursuit on autobiographical memory suggests a trade-off: Favorable goal pursuit conditions may prompt people not motivated for achievement to shift their focus from agentic to communal themes, while individuals motivated for achievement maintain their priorities.     

Motive-related memories: content, structure, and affect

Two studies tested hypotheses on the content and structure of autobiographical memories and the affect linked to them. In Study 1, agentic- and communal-motivated individuals recorded their most memorable experiences and completed the PANAS each day for 6 weeks. Memories were coded for content and structure. Agentics and communals reported more motive congruent memories, and their congruent memories were structured using more differentiation and integration, respectively. In addition, agentics had slightly higher PA and lower NA scores. In Study 2, agentics and communals recalled an event pertaining to either social separation or connection and then completed an affect measure of agentic and communal items. Agentics recalled more agentic memories in the separation condition and communals recalled more communal memories in the connection condition. Complexity analyses showed that agentics and communals used differentiation and integration respectively to recall their motive-congruent memories. The affect data showed a modestpredicted pattern. Results suggest that implicit motives have an impact on autobiographical memory but are not as clearly related to self-report affect measures, possibly due to method variance.     

The influence of implicit motives on memory processes.

Four studies tested the hypothesis that agentic and communal motives act as a channel for new knowledge and are linked to specific ways of organizing information that facilitate its accessibility. In Study 1, agentic and communal participants read an agentic or a communal vignette consisting of differentiated and integrated statements, performed a distraction task, then completed written recall and recognition tasks. Agentics recalled and recognized more differentiation in the agentic story; communals recalled and recognized more integration in the communal story. A computerized replication with randomized recognition items (Study 2) found the same pattern of recognition results. Studies 3 and 4 used implicit motive primes and found similar results in both written and computerized recognition tasks. These ways of organizing information have powerful implications for the encoding of autobiographical knowledge and its long-term organization.     

Two routes toward optimism: how agentic and communal themes in autobiographical memories guide optimism for the future

Autobiographical memories are particularly adaptive because they function not only to preserve the past, but also to direct our future thoughts and behaviours. Two studies were conducted to examine how communal and agentic themes of positive autobiographical memories differentially predicted the route from autobiographical memories to optimism for the future. Across two studies, results revealed that the degree to which participants focused on communal themes in their autobiographical memories predicted their experience of nostalgia. In turn, the experience of nostalgia increased participants’ levels of self-esteem and in turn, optimism for the future. By contrast, the degree to which participants focused on agentic themes in their memories predicted self-esteem and optimism, operating outside the experience of nostalgia. These effects remained even after controlling for self-focused attention. Together, these studies provide greater understanding of the interrelations among autobiographical memory, self-concept, and time, and demonstrate how agency and communion operate to influence perceptions of one’s future when thinking about the past.     

Cognitive complexity in response to traumatic experiences

Two studies examined how personality motives influence the perception of traumatic events in memory and how such perception may be linked to psychological distress. Participants completed implicit and explicit measures of agentic and communal motives. In Study 1, participants living in New York City at the time of the terrorist attacks wrote their thoughts and feelings about the events of September 11th. In Study 2, participants wrote about a personally traumatic experience. In both studies, they also completed questionnaires on psychological symptoms and stress-related growth. The memories were then scored for differentiation and integration. Agentic motives correlated with differentiated perceptions and differentiation was linked to dissociative symptoms in Study 2. Communal motives related to integrated perceptions, and integration related to stress-related growth in both studies. Findings suggest that motives play a significant role in the perception of traumatic and difficult experiences and that these perceptions may be differentially linked to psychological impact.     

Themes of Agency and Communion In Significant Autobiographical Scenes

ABSTRACT In three studies employing over 350 community adults and college students, participants wrote or told narratives of personally important scenes in their lives. The autobiographical accounts were coded for themes of agency and communion, the two general content dimensions in lives and life stories that have been identified by many theorists and researchers. The four agentic themes of self-mastery, status, achievement/responsibility, and empowerment were positively associated with Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) measures of achievement and power motivation, self-report scales of dominance and achievement, and personal strivings concerning being successful and feeling strong. Similarly, the four communal themes of love/friendship, dialogue, care/help, and community were positively associated with intimacy motivation, needs for affiliation and nurturance, and personal strivings concerned with warm and close relationships. The results suggest a thematic coherence in personality across the arenas of key autobiographical memories, social motives, and daily goals.     

The role of motives in the content and structure of autobiographical memory

Findings from 4 studies suggest that differentiation and integration are used by individuals high in agency and communion to structure motive-related information in episodic memory. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that agentic and communal individuals recalled more emotional experiences related to their motives, and that agentic individuals used more differentiation whereas communal individuals used more integration to structure these memories. Study 3 showed that agentic and communal individuals used more differentiation and integration to structure memories about social separation and connection, respectively. Study 4 demonstrated a similar pattern of recall in an experimentally controlled retrieval task. For a motive-congruent topic, agentic individuals recognized more differentiated information and had fewer differentiation recognition errors, and communal individuals freely recalled more integration.     

Wishes, Motives, Goals, and Personal Memories: Relations of Measures of Human Motivation

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to compare measures of explicit and implicit motives. One hundred and one participants completed six measures of motivation, including Thematic Apperceptive stories, autobiographical memories, three wishes, personal striving lists, the Personality Research Form, and self-ratings. Stories, memories, wishes, and strivings were content-analyzed using Winter's (1989) system. Although overall correlations did emerge among explicit measures within the same motive, there were numerous correlations among methodologically similar measures of different motives. In general, explicit measures did not correlate with thematic measures of the same motives. Although correlations among measures were similar for men and women, explicit measures of power converged with thematic measures of power only for men. Exploratory factor analysis identified three factors: explicit achievement, explicit affiliation, and power. Implicit achievement motivation loaded negatively on the affiliation factor. Implications for research on implicit and self-attributed motivation are discussed.     

Agentic and Communal Social Motives

People chart and navigate their social lives along two cardinal axes – agency and communion. The motives to approach communion (e.g., enhance closeness and cooperation), approach agency (e.g., gain status and control), avoid communion (e.g., limit vulnerabilities and obligations), and avoid agency (e.g., limit resentments and rivalries) can each be adaptive, depending on the person and situation. After reviewing common implicit and explicit measures of agentic and communal motives, I describe how these motives together shape (and are shaped by) diverse phenomena, such as individuals' involvements in mating and parenting and, concurrently, their testosterone and oxytocin levels. I also detail how normative models of development and maturation depict a shifting dynamic between communal and agentic motives over the lifespan: In childhood, secure attachments provide foundations for developing agency; in adulthood, the challenge becomes yoking agency (one's accumulated mental, physical, and social resources) to communal aims (nurturing others and prosocial endeavors).     

Perception of communal motives in couples: Accuracy,bias, and their associations with relationship length

Can romantic partners accurately perceive each other’s communal motives, or are these perceptions biased by their own motivational hopes and fears? This study used data from N = 1,905 partnered participants to examine the extent to which partner perceptions of communal motives correspond to targets’ (accuracy) and perceivers’ (motivational bias) explicit and implicit communal motives. Our results indicate that explicit communal motives and implicit communal approach motives can be (a) accurately inferred and (b) positively bias communal motive perception. Furthermore, there was no evidence for moderation of either accuracy or motivational bias by relationship length. These findings point to the early visibility of both implicit and explicit motives in couples, as well as their persistent biasing effects on partner perception.     

Gender, personality, and involuntary autobiographical memory

We utilised the recently developed continuous word association task (CWAT) to investigate whether attributes of involuntary autobiographical memory, including gender and cue valence effects, were similar to those found for voluntary autobiographical memory, as well as investigating the role of individual differences in memory production. A total of 80 undergraduate volunteers reported involuntary memories that came to mind during the word association task and completed measures of trait dissociation and psychosis-proneness. Involuntary memories showed similar cue valence effects to those typically found with voluntary memories but the usual gender effect was only apparent once participants learned the task involved autobiographical memory. The total number of involuntary autobiographical memories produced in response to negative cue words was related to greater trait dissociation and psychosis-proneness. The implications for differences between voluntary and involuntary autobiographical memory are discussed.     

Social problem solving and autobiographical memory in posttraumatic stress disorder

This study investigated the relationship between overgeneral autobiographical memory and social problem solving in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Civilian trauma survivors with and without PTSD (N=41) provided autobiographical memories of events in response to positive and negative cue words. Participants also completed the means-end problem-solving (MEPS) procedure. PTSD participants reported more overgeneral memories, regardless of cue valence, than non-PTSD participants. Individuals with PTSD also displayed poorer problem solving than those without PTSD. Overgeneral autobiographical memory was strongly associated with deficits in problem solving. This study suggests that deficient problem solving in PTSD is associated with impaired retrieval of specific autobiographical memories.     

Activating attachment representations impact how we retrieve autobiographical memories

Although much research indicates that proximity to attachment figures confers many psychological benefits, there is little evidence pertaining to how attachment activation may impact autobiographical memory retrieval. Following a negative mood induction to elicit overgeneral autobiographical retrieval, participants (N?=?70) were administered an induction in which they imagined a person who is a strong attachment figure or an acquaintance. Participants then completed an autobiographical memory task to retrieve memories in response to neutral and negative cue words. Attachment priming resulted in less distress, increased retrieval of specific memories, and reduced retrieval of categoric memories. These findings indicate that activation of mental representations of attachment figures can impact on the specificity of autobiographical memory retrieval, and extends prevailing models of autobiographical memory by integrating them with attachment theory.     

自传体记忆的情绪对其相关信息内隐提取的影响

本研究主要考察自传体记忆本身的情绪是否影响该记忆相关信息的内隐提取过程。取大学生15人完成实验, 实验分为两部分：记忆提取和词汇判断。首先在记忆提取阶段, 要求被试根据词对(形容词-中性名词)提取积极、消极和中性情绪色彩的自传体记忆事件。接着在词汇判断任务中, 要求被试对包含提取过记忆的中性名词的词语进行词和非词的判断, 并且记录相应的脑电波。结果发现：(1)被试按要求成功提取了积极、消极和中性三类自传体记忆事件。词汇判断任务中, 内隐提取三类自传体记忆信息的反应时和正确率均无显著差异。(2)相比于积极、中性自传体记忆信息, 消极自传体记忆信息提取的过程中的ERP波幅更大, 更偏向于正向。这表明自传体记忆信息的内隐提取受到记忆本身情绪的影响, 消极自传体记忆信息提取需要付出更多资源。     

Truth and Wishful Thinking: How Interindividual Differences in Communal Motives Manifest in Momentary Partner Perceptions

Although rooted in reality, partner perceptions often reflect wishful thinking due to perceivers' needs. Dispositional needs, or motives, can differ between persons; however, little is known about their differential associations with everyday partner perception. The present study used data from a 4-week experience sampling study (N = up to 60942 surveys from 510 individuals nested in 259 couples) to examine the effects of perceivers' partner-related implicit and explicit communal motives on the perception of (i) global communal partner behaviour and (ii) specific communal and uncommunal partner behaviours. The results of truth and bias models of judgement and quasi-signal detection analyses indicate that strong implicit communal approach motives and strong explicit communal motives are associated with the tendency to overestimate the partner's communal behaviour. Additionally, strong implicit communal approach motives were associated with the tendency to avoid perceptions of uncommunal partner behaviour. Neither implicit nor explicit communal motives had an effect on accuracy in the perception of particularly communal partner behaviour. The results highlight the relevance of both implicit and explicit communal motives for momentary partner perceptions and emphasise the benefits of dyadic microlongitudinal designs for a better understanding of the mechanisms through which individual differences manifest in couples' everyday lives. © 2019 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

Social role effects on gender stereotyping in Germany and Japan

Social role theory postulates that gender stereotypes are restrained for men and women observed in the same social role. Cultural differences in the valuation of communal attributes might moderate this effect. To examine this possibility, 288 participants (144 German, 144 Japanese) estimated the communal and agentic attributes of an average man or woman described in a male‐dominated role, a female‐dominated role, or without role information. We hypothesized and found that in Germany and Japan, participants perceived men as more agentic than women without role information and as similarly agentic in the same role. However, for communion, German and Japanese participants reacted differently. German participants perceived women as more communal than men without role information and in male‐dominated roles and perceived men as more communal than women in female‐dominated roles. Japanese participants perceived all targets as similarly communal, regardless of role or gender, suggesting that communion is generally expected in Japan.