Motivation (Psychology)

Despite long-held recognition of the importance of situations in psychological understanding and analysis, current research is lacking in discernment of structurally important elements of situations as they relate to behavior (Funder et al., 2012). Using the Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ: Wagerman & Funder, 2009), an 89-item measure used to assess the psychological properties of situations, the major aim of this study was to identify a reliable set of categories or types of situations that people experience every day. Data was collected online from a U.S. sample (N = 186). Participants were asked to recall details about a situation he or she experienced during the previous day (i.e. "What were you doing yesterday at this time?"). Participants were then asked to rate that situation using the RSQ. Inverse factor analyses revealed the following everyday situation types: 1) Social Closeness, 2) Obligatory, 3) Cognitive, 4) Enjoyable/Aesthetic, and 5) Anxiety Inducing.

Despite extensive research in conflict, relatively little is known about how psychological processes evolve over time in response to a dispute. The present research examines how cognitive and affective processes react to cooperative, competitive, or mixed cooperative-competitive interactions. Experimental predictions were derived from a model of two-actor interaction (Liebovitch, Naudot, Vallacher, Nowak, Bu--Wrzosinksa & Coleman, 2008). Specifically, it was expected that attitudes and emotional valence would exhibit stable dynamics when people encountered a neutral, continually cooperative, or continually competitive interaction. However, attitudes and emotional valence were expected to exhibit perturbation in response to transitions from cooperation to competition and vice-versa. These predictions were tested in four experiments. The first study verified most predictions, finding that people have little attitude or valence reaction to interactions that are neutral, continually coo perative or continually competitive. This study also established that people's attitudes are significantly unstable when faced with an interaction shifting from cooperation to competition, and this is experienced with negative emotions. However, interactions shifting from competition to cooperation resulted in stable attitudes and emotional valence. The remaining three experiments sought to explain the lack of psychological reaction to the development of cooperation in a previously competitive interaction. In Study 2, interaction expectancy was ruled out as a factor. Study 3 demonstrated that the reactivity to sudden competition and lack of reactivity to sudden cooperation developed regardless of interaction history. Finally, Study 4 offers evidence indicating that the lack of reaction to sudden cooperation results from factors other than the duration of cooperative feedback. The research has several important implications. First, the results provide evidence that competition is

The purpose of this study was to determine if individuals who are professionally committed to careers in public education possess public service motivation. The participants in this study were a sample of convenience selected through their enrollment in graduate education programs within three East Coast universities. The sample was stratified into three groups based on their education roles as teachers, aspiring leaders, and school district administrators. Based on the 258 education sector participants, the majority were Caucasian, female, and under the age of 30. All respondents held at least a bachelor's degree and the majority held up to ten years tenure in education. Utilizing an abridged version of Perry's (1996) multi-dimensional scale that was modified for the education sector, the public service motivation (PSM) construct was measured using an Internet survey approach. Three of the public service motivation dimensions and two commitment items were used to operationalize the PSM and professional commitment of education professionals within their current roles. Correlation, regression, ANOVA, and t-test analyses were conducted to examine the data collected. Study findings concluded that education professionals possess public service motivation and are professionally committed to their careers. In addition, results indicated that school district administrators possessed higher levels of public service motivation than teachers. Furthermore, demographic characteristics indicated that educators who are older, more experienced, and highly educated possess higher levels of PSM. Perhaps the most critical discovery was that when comparing education professionals to their public administration counterparts, educators possessed higher levels of public service motivation. These findings have several important implications for education institutions, academic scholars, human resource managers, and leadership preparation programs that would all benefit from all

Previous research suggests that self-reports of the frequency of events can vary dramatically. Minor changes in question format can result in major changes in the obtained results. The purpose of this study is to examine how changes in reference period, memory cue, and measurement scale affect participants' self-reports of conflict frequency. Additionally, the role of cognitive effort was examined to gain insight into the recall strategy used for different measures of conflict. Participants include 175 college undergraduates between the ages of 18-24, enrolled in psychology courses at Florida Atlantic University. Results indicate that reference period and memory cue form a significant interaction to create changes in reports of conflict frequency. Both reference period and memory cue act differently within the different conflict measurement scales. In the 0-10 or more scale, memory cue was statistically significant with higher rates of conflict reported in the cued condition than the uncued. In the open (fill in the blank) scale, there was a significant interaction between reference period and memory cue with the highest amount of conflict being reported in the one day/cued condition. The Likert scale behaved differently than the other two absolute frequency scales. Within the Likert scale there was a significant interaction between reference period and memory cue, however, the highest amount of conflict reported was in the two weeks/uncued condition. Finally, cognitive effort varied as a product of reference period, within both the 0-10 or more scale and the open scale with the two weeks condition eliciting higher reports of effort than the one day condition. These cognitive effort findings suggest that participants used enumeration as a recall strategy for the absolute frequency scales and estimation for the Likert scale.

Resource allocation theory, Polich (2007) suggests cortical measures may attenuate when processing demands increase. Thirteen HIV-negative women (M = 36.5) and 15 HIV-positive women (M = 36.1) infected were instructed to view neutral and negative IAPS images and then to detect rare tones in a subsequent auditory oddball task. A 2 x 2 ANOVA for the auditory P3 did not indicate a main effect for picture valence however an interaction was found between picture valence and serostatus at location Fz, F(1,24) = 18.99, p<.001. During the visual ERP sequence an interaction between valence and serostatus was found at the Pz location, F(1,24) = 18.99, p<.001, meaning the late positive potential (LPP) was not modulated between viewing neutral and negative images in HIV-positive women. These findings suggest that the manifestation of HIV in women may alter the neural processing of emotions, though not to the detriment of a subsequent cognitive task.

Superstitious behavior is still a common occurrence in modern society, seemingly impervious to intellectual progress that humans have made throughout history. While the desire to maintain a sense of control over one's environment has been investigated as one of the key motivations behind superstitious behavior, it has yet to be examined within the context of the self-concept. Threats to one's sense of control can also be construed as general threats to one's global sense of self-worth. Consequently, while superstitious behavior may be triggered by control threats, it may also occur as a result of any general threat to self-integrity. Moreover, if superstitious behavior is motivated by the desire to maintain overall self-integrity, then depriving individuals of a chance to engage in superstitious behavior should elicit subsequent attempts to repair self-integrity via alternative means. Three studies were conducted in order to establish this link between self functioning and superstitious behavior. Studies 1a and 1b did not find any evidence that manipulating the self-concept prior to an event designed to evoke superstition would increase the desire to engage in superstitious behavior. Threatening (or boosting) one's self-esteem prior to a game of chance did not affect participant's desire to use a superstitious strategy (aura color). Study 2 provided evidence that superstitious behavior is motivated by a desire to maintain self-integrity by showing that individuals deprived of their aura color prior to a game of chance were more likely to engage in self-affirmation subsequently. It also showed that the impact of depriving individuals of a superstitious strategy is independent of belief in such strategy.

System justification theorists have proposed that people will defend one's circumstances, even if they inflict psychological and material costs. This tendency has been found to extend even to outcomes that have not yet been decided, but are perceived as being likely; however, this research has only examined outcomes that will be decided on in the near future. According to Construal Level Theory (CLT), distant future events are represented primarily according to their essential features, while thoughts about temporally near events are more concrete and contextual. We hypothesized that system justification results from the motivational impact of low-level thinking, and so would be expected to occur for near-future, but not distant-future, outcomes. Consistent with our hypothesis, our Main Study found evidence of system justification only when outcomes were to be decided in the near future. Distant future outcomes, in contrast, were viewed as being more undesirable as they became increasingly likely.