Resource control and status as stimuli for arousing power motivation: An American-Chinese comparison

In this paper, we analyze power motivation from a cross-cultural perspective. Power motivation has been mainly studied within the Western culture. However, previous research suggests that some contours and nuances of power and power motivation may be culturally specific. In this article, we analyze cultural differences between American and Chinese students in how power motivation is aroused. Drawing from the cross-cultural literature, we propose that having decision-making control over resources increases levels of power motivation among Americans but not Chinese, whereas status-elevation increases power motivation among both Americans and Chinese. These hypotheses were tested experimentally with resource-control, status-elevation, and neutral conditions. The first hypothesis was fully supported, but the second one was only partially supported. Levels of power motivation in the neutral condition (i.e., dispositional power motives) were similar for American and Chinese participants, but power motivation arousal was greater for Americans than Chinese, in both power arousal conditions. These findings contribute to our understanding of the power motivation construct in a non-Western context.     

Motivation in later life: personal projects and well-being

"Personal projects," as defined by B. R. Little (1983), were elicited from 600 community residents aged 70+, representing a broad range of health and illness. Factor analysis revealed 6 types of personal projects: activities of daily living, active recreation, other-oriented activities, intellectual activities, home planning, and spiritual moral activities. Background factors and health were shown to affect the number and type of projects reported. Most indices of personal projects were associated with positive affect and valuation of life. Only 1 was associated with depression. This confirms the differential association of personal projects to positive but not negative affect. Personal projects are seen as part of an open motivational system in which social position, cognitive ability, health, and positive mental health are mutually interacting members.     

The relationship between social anxiety and social support in adolescents: a test of competing causal models

This study compared the strength of competing causal models in explaining the relationship between perceived support, enacted support, and social anxiety in adolescents. The social causation hypothesis postulates that social support causes social anxiety, whereas the social selection hypothesis postulates that social anxiety causes social support. The reciprocal model combines the two hypotheses by arguing that the causal relationship between social support and social anxiety is largely reciprocal. This study tests a modification of the reciprocal model by specifying perceptions of support as a mediating construct. Two waves of data with an interval of three months were collected on 357 college students. Structural equation modeling was used to compare the reciprocal and mediated reciprocal causal models. The study found some support for the mediated reciprocal model, but the magnitude of the relationships were weaker than expected. Limitations and suggestion for future research are discussed.     

Gender, social class, and the subjective experience of aging: self-perceived personality change from early adulthood to late midlife

This study explored the applicability of previous research (obtained with groups of college-educated women) about the subjective experience of aging in midlife to men and less-educated people. Two-hundred fifty-nine men and women who graduated from a public high school in 1955-1957 retrospectively assessed their feelings of identity certainty, confident power, generativity, and concern about aging for their 60s, 40s, and 20s. Participants reported higher levels of identity certainty, confident power, and concern about aging at each age, and a leveling off of generativity in their 60s. There were some gender and social class differences. Although men and women recalled the same trajectory of these feelings, men reported higher levels of identity certainty and confident power across age. Non-college-educated men recalled the highest levels of concern about aging across age. We discuss how these findings add to our understanding of the experience of aging in these domains.     

The psychophysics of uneconomical choice: non-linear reward evaluation by a nectar feeder

Uneconomical choices by humans or animals that evaluate reward options challenge the expectation that decision-makers always maximize the return currency. One possible explanation for such deviations from optimality is that the ability to sense differences in physical value between available alternatives is constrained by the sensory and cognitive processes for encoding profitability. In this study, we investigated the capacity of a nectarivorous bat species (Glossophaga commissarisi) to discriminate between sugar solutions with different concentrations. We conducted a two-alternative free-choice experiment on a population of wild electronically tagged bats foraging at an array of computer-automated artificial flowers that recorded individual choices. We used a Bayesian approach to fit individual psychometric functions, relating the strength of preferring the higher concentration option to the intensity of the presented stimulus. Psychometric analysis revealed that discrimination ability increases non-linearly with respect to intensity. We combined this result with a previous psychometric analysis of volume perception. Our theoretical analysis of choice for rewards that vary in two quality dimensions revealed regions of parameter combinations where uneconomic choice is expected. Discrimination ability may be constrained by non-linear perceptual and cognitive encoding processes that result in uneconomical choice.     

Previous reward decreases errors of commission on later ‘No‐Go’ trials in children 4 to 12 years of age: evidence for a context monitoring account

Inhibitory control is widely hypothesized to be the cornerstone of executive function in childhood and the central deficit in a number of developmental disorders, including attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, recent evidence from adults indicates that performance on response inhibition tasks may primarily reflect non‐inhibitory attentional control (context monitoring) processes. Yet it may be that inhibition plays a more central role in childhood – a time when the architecture of cognitive processes might be more transparent due to wide variability in skill level. Here we directly test inhibitory and context monitoring explanations of task performance on a Go/No‐Go task in a large group of children 4–12 years of age. We conclude that traditional inhibitory conceptualizations of task performance on the Go/No‐Go task cannot account for our findings, calling into question evidence supporting a central role for inhibitory control in cognitive development or developmental psychopathology.     

African American Children’s Racial Discrimination Experiences and Mental Health

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The current study examined how African American children’s experiences of perceived personal racial discrimination and perceived vicarious racial...     

Relations of Parenting and Negative Life Events to Cognitive Diatheses for Depression in Children

In a sample of 299 children (grades 2, 4, and 6), we examined parenting and negative life events as predictors of depressive cognitions, specifically low self-perceived competence, depressive cognitive schemas, and depressogenic attributional style. We also examined developmental trends in these relations. Children completed measures of parenting, negative life events, and depressive cognitions. Parents also completed measures of parenting and negative life events. Consistent with our hypotheses, negative parenting and negative life events corresponded with higher levels of depressive cognitions, whereas positive parenting corresponded with lower levels of depressive cognitions. The relations between negative parenting and negative automatic thoughts were stronger for older children. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The role of motivation, responsibility, and integrative complexity in crisis escalation: comparative studies of war and peace crises

Drawing on D. G. Winter's (1993) comparison of 1914 and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the author identified 8 paired crises (1 escalating to war, 1 peacefully resolved). Documents (diplomatic messages, speeches, official media commentary) from each crisis were scored for power, affiliation, and achievement motivation; text measures of responsibility and activity inhibition; and integrative complexity. Aggregated effect-size results show that war crises had significantly higher levels of power motivation and responsibility, whereas peace crises showed trends toward higher integrative complexity and achievement motivation. Follow-up analyses suggested that these results are robust with respect to both sides in a crisis, type of material scored, and historical time. The power motive results extend previous findings, but the responsibility results suggest that responsibility plays a paradoxical role in war. Future research directions are sketched, and the role of psychological content analysis in monitoring the danger of war is discussed.