Do implicit motives and basic psychological needs interact to predict well-being and flow? Testing a universal hypothesis and a matching hypothesis

Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan in Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. Plenum Press, New York, 1985) suggests that certain experiences, such as competence, are equally beneficial to everyone’s well-being (universal hypothesis), whereas Motive Disposition Theory (McClelland in Human motivation. Scott, Foresman, Glenview, IL, 1985) predicts that some people, such as those with a high achievement motive, should benefit particularly from such experiences (matching hypothesis). Existing research on motives as moderators of the relationship between basic need satisfaction and positive outcomes supports both these seemingly inconsistent views. Focusing on the achievement motive, we sought to resolve this inconsistency by considering the specificity of the outcome variables. When predicting domain-specific well-being and flow, the achievement motive should interact with felt competence. However, when it comes to predicting general well-being and flow, felt competence should unfold its effects without being moderated by the achievement motive. Two studies confirmed these assumptions indicating that the universal and matching hypotheses are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.     

The differential functions of imagery and verbal thought in insomnia

Individuals with insomnia were exposed to a stressor (speech threat) prior to getting into bed and were instructed to think about the speech and its implications in either images (Image group, n = 14) or verbal thought (Verbal group, n = 17). Participants completed questionnaires about speech anxiety, arousal, and sense of resolution. Measures were taken of subjective (sleep diary estimates) and objective (actigraphy) sleep-onset latency. In the short term, the Image group reported more distress and arousal relative to those in the Verbal group. In the longer term, the Image group estimated that they fell asleep more quickly and, the following morning, reported less anxiety and more comfort about giving the speech compared with the Verbal group.     

Self-control in honeybees

Self-control means choosing a large delayed reward over a small immediate reward; impulsiveness is its opposite. The metabolic hypothesis states that the amount of self-control across species correlates negatively with metabolic rate (Tobin & Logue, 1994). Foraging honeybees have high metabolic rates; the metabolic hypothesis would predict little self-control in bees. But foraging bees work for the longterm good of their hive, conditions that seem to require self-control. In three experiments, we gave bees the choice between (1) a sweeter delayed reward and a less sweet immediate reward and (2) a large delayed reward and a small immediate reward. Bees showed much self-control, inconsistent with the metabolic hypothesis.     

On the development of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology of imagination and its use for interdisciplinary research

In this paper I trace Husserl’s transformation of his notion of phantasy from its strong leanings towards empiricism into a transcendental phenomenology of imagination. Rejecting the view that this account is only more incompatible with contemporary neuroscientific research, I instead claim that the transcendental suspension of naturalistic (or scientific) pretensions precisely enables cooperation between the two distinct realms of phenomenology and science. In particular, a transcendental account of phantasy can disclose the specific accomplishments of imagination without prematurely deciding upon a particular scientific paradigm for its experimental investigation; a decision that is best left to the sciences themselves.You will find a more extensive version of the first sections of this paper in Rudolf Bernet, Donn Welton, Gina Zavota (eds), in press. Husserl: Critical Assessments (5 vol.). London: Routledge.     

Interference and negative priming effects in adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Three visual selective attention tasks were used to measure potential differences in susceptibility to interference and inhibitory cognitive control processes in 16 adolescents diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 45 similar-aged controls. Susceptibility to interference was assessed using the Stroop color and word naming test. Efficiency of distractor inhibition was assessed in two conceptual negative priming tasks. The majority of studies in this area indicate that people with ADHD demonstrate higher levels of interference and lower negative priming effects in comparison with age-matched peers. However, we found that although the ADHD group was consistently slower to name target stimuli than the control group, there were no differences in interference or negative priming between the two groups.     

Utilization of covariation knowledge in source monitoring: no evidence for implicit processes

In three experiments, a "hidden covariation" (Lewicki, in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 135-146, 1986) of nonsalient stimulus attributes and the source of stimulus information was established to test whether implicit knowledge about this correlation influences source memory judgments. The source monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, and Lindsay, in Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3-28, 1993) postulates heuristic and strategic judgment processes in source attributions. A multinomial model analysis disentangled memory and guessing processes. While there were large strategic guessing biases involving explicit knowledge in all experiments, there was no evidence for the use of implicit covariation knowledge. Only participants who were later able to verbalize the covariation had shown corresponding biases during the source memory test, suggesting that implicit covariation knowledge plays no prominent role in the reconstruction processes in source monitoring.     

Converting interns into regular employees: The role of intern–supervisor exchange

Internship participation has undergone rapid expansion over the past three decades, to a point where today, many graduates and internship host-organisations regard internships as the preferred career entry point into a range of professional vocations. To date, however, there has been a dearth of studies examining factors that can influence the conversion of interns into regular employees with their host-organisations. This study bridges that gap as it involved the collection of data at three time intervals from 303 intern–supervisor dyads (n = 606), in order to determine the key predictors of intern conversion. Findings indicated that although intern–supervisor exchange played a strong role in influencing intern's performance, learning opportunities and satisfaction it did not play a significant role in predicting both the intern's and the supervisor's conversion intentions. Nonetheless, both intern's and supervisor's conversion intentions measured during the internship period did play a strong role in predicting actual conversion to employment at the host-organisation subsequent to the intern's graduation. Thus, this study begins to shed light on the dynamics on intern conversion, as a pivotal early juncture in an employee's career lifespan.     

The subjective experience of object recognition: comparing metacognition for object detection and object categorization

Perceptual decisions seem to be made automatically and almost instantly. Constructing a unitary subjective conscious experience takes more time. For example, when trying to avoid a collision with a car on a foggy road you brake or steer away in a reflex, before realizing you were in a near accident. This subjective aspect of object recognition has been given little attention. We used metacognition (assessed with confidence ratings) to measure subjective experience during object detection and object categorization for degraded and masked objects, while objective performance was matched. Metacognition was equal for degraded and masked objects, but categorization led to higher metacognition than did detection. This effect turned out to be driven by a difference in metacognition for correct rejection trials, which seemed to be caused by an asymmetry of the distractor stimulus: It does not contain object-related information in the detection task, whereas it does contain such information in the categorization task. Strikingly, this asymmetry selectively impacted metacognitive ability when objective performance was matched. This finding reveals a fundamental difference in how humans reflect versus act on information: When matching the amount of information required to perform two tasks at some objective level of accuracy (acting), metacognitive ability (reflecting) is still better in tasks that rely on positive evidence (categorization) than in tasks that rely more strongly on an absence of evidence (detection).