A Motivational Analysis of Russian Presidents, 1994–2018

This article analyzes the motivations of the three presidents of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union: Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, and Dmitry Medvedev. Imagery for the achievement, affiliation, and power motives was scored from the texts of annual presidential addresses to the Federal Assembly from 1994 through 2018. Although there were fluctuations from president to president, and from year to year within each term, the Russian presidents overall tended to be higher in achievement than power. This contrasts with many political leaders from other countries and suggests modification in previous conclusions about the problems of high achievement motivation in politics. The scores of each president are related to the events and policies of that president's term of office. The third term of Vladimir Putin is particularly interesting, because his achievement scores were lower, and power and affiliation scores higher, than in his previous terms. These changes seem to fit with his changes in foreign and domestic policies from his earlier terms.     

Enhancing implicit change detection through action

Implicit change detection demonstrates how the visual system can benefit from stored information that is not immediately available to conscious awareness. We investigated the role of motor action in this context. In the first two experiments, using a one-shot implicit change-detection paradigm, participants responded to unperceived changes either with an action (jabbing the screen at the guessed location of a change) or with words (verbal report), and sat either 60 cm or 300 cm (with a laser pointer) away from the display. Our observers guessed the locations of changes at a reachable distance better with an action than with a verbal judgment. At 300 cm, beyond reach, the motor advantage disappeared. In experiment 3, this advantage was also unavailable when participants sat at a reachable distance but responded with hand-held laser pointers near their bodies. We conclude that a motor system specialized for real-time visually guided behavior has access to additional visual information. Importantly, this system is not activated by merely executing an action (experiment 2) or presenting stimuli in one's near space (experiment 3). It is activated only when both conditions are fulfilled, which implies that it is the actual contact that matters to the visual system.